Chapter 1
THE ROCK BOUNCED OFF my unprotected skull with a vengeance. It was the size of an English walnut, or larger, and it hurt like blazes.
Most girls are very inaccurate when they throw things. But not this chick. She made a bull's-eye on the first try. I got a glimpse of the missile zooming toward me like some honey bee headed for the hive, but it seemed so preposterous that I couldn't believe it wasn't a mirage. The temperature was all of one hundred and six at the moment. By. the time my laggard brain cells telegraphed that I was the target, it was too late to duck.
"Don't you come one step closer!" she warned. The words, like the rock, had a sting in them.
Isolated Salt Creek at this particular spot makes a sharp U-turn, to dig its thirsty way through a maze of jutting basalt boulders that some ancient glacial upheaval had stacked here in grotesque confusion.
I was walking upstream, eyes intact on the pony tracks in the gravel bed of the stream, wondering whether the man who rode in here was white or red.
Then wham!
This rock sailed right for my noggin, bounced off my crewcut cranium like a tennis ball off a tight net. Only the effect was slightly more disastrous to my skull.
I jerked up faster than I would had I encountered a prowling side-winder. My first impulse, naturally, was one of anger. Most folks don't get conked on the noggin and remain calm and unperturbed, including me.
Then I saw the girl against the rock overhang and this had to be a mirage! She was burnished copper from head to toe, possibly a Bannock if her raven hair meant anything. I knew there were several small communities of Bannocks in the area.
But she was taller and slimmer than the usual Bannock girl, with long-stemmed legs arching gracefully from trim ankles. Missing too was the round, Oriental face. Instead, her profile was oval, with good definition in the chin, a straight nose, and a wide mouth that could easily be classified in the sex dictionary as sultry. Just now the full lips were tight in anger.
No, this wasn't a mirage. Mirages aren't angry, and mirages don't have vocal chords.
Saying she was angry isn't quite adequate, even. Sizzling might be a better word.
I could understand her temper flareup. Without doubt she had assumed that she was the only human being in miles, so she had taken advantage of that fact to strip down and cool off in the creek. She was really soaping it up in this pool left by the Spring rains. And then I had blundered into the scene.
"You take another step, mister, and I'll scratch out your eyes!"
Yep, she was boiling, furious at my intrusion!
Not that I blamed her in the least.
She was naked as the day she was born.
I stood there for a moment, oogling. Any male who didn't oogle at this pulchritudinous female taking a bath needed a hormone injection, king size. You could have out-lined that scene in the pool with a giant picture frame, and it would have outshone anything that Gaugin ever did.
Her breasts were firm conical mounds of perfect symmetry, the points upthrust and saucy. She had soaped her entire body, but now the lather was dissipating, revealing larger areas of golden girl, inch by inch. Her hips were sleek and lean, still her rounded buttocks molded perfectly to the voluptuousness of her willowy form.
Discreetly I wandered over to a ledge of rock, sat down, and turned my back upon her.
"Is this better?" I asked.
"Much better. And don't you dare turn around!"
"And if the temptation becomes too great?"
"My rifle is leaned against that red rock, with my clothes. I'll get to it before you do!"
"Naked and barefoot?"
"Naked and barefoot!"
I got a cigarette between my dry lips, lighted it. "Are you Nan Goodwin?"
She was long in answering. "How did you know?"
"I didn't. I was merely guessing. I was told that Nan Goodwin was Miss Western Tribes of 1963, a girl so outstanding that she didn't even have competition. You looked very beautiful there in the pool, so I merely presumed you had to be Nan."
"I've never seen you before-"
"Perhaps not. I'm Steve Hille."
Again the splashing momentarily stopped, as if she might be in deep thought. I was tempted to turn, felt the swelling bump on my head, and decided that I wouldn't risk another siege of migraine.
"Hille! I saw that name somewhere, quite recently."
"On the side of a truck or jeep, perhaps?"
"That's it! On the side of a truck at Arroyo Seco. Hille Video, Inc."
"Right!" I said. "We're on location in Cougar Canyon."
"You mean you're shooting there?"
"We're headquartered in the canyon. Some of our shooting sites are fifty miles distant."
She was silent. If my ears were right in deciphering sounds, she was at the moment wading out of the pool. That meant she was about ready to slip back into the garb of civilization.
I couldn't suppress an ironical chuckle at the moment, thinking of Ben. If only he had tagged along, with a camera. But we couldn't have used any of the footage-even a long shot-without permission from her, and a signed release.
Ben, who has a phobia for exotic chicks, would really have swallowed his tonsils. And that is no criticism of Ben Carazzo. He's the best thing behind a camera I've seen-and I've seen a lot of the boys who control the galloping celluloid.
There was some rustling sounds now, and finally approaching footsteps.
"Okay, Steve," she said simply.
I swung about on the ledge to face her. She stood about ten feet distant, a tight smile on her face.
"It's damn near unbelievable!" I exploded.
"What's so unbelievable?"
"That you're a Bannock."
"But I'm not a Bannock. I'm Maricopa."
I shrugged. "What I really meant: it seems so unbelievable that you're Indian. You could be Italian or Portuguese or Spanish-or even Gypsy."
"What's wrong with being an Indian?" she parried. She wasn't angry, merely inquisitive.
"Nothing. Nothing at all. I'd say it's rather a proud heritage. What I was talking about is facial and physical features. You simply don't look like an Indian girl!"
She came closer and the smile deepened, grew friendlier. She reached forward, rather timidly, and her cool still-damp fingers started a bit of exploratory work on my skull.
"I'm sorry about the rock," she said.
I grinned. There was a deep, unnoticed gem-like lustre in her eyes, once you were close to her. Her lips were cherry red, I was positive that at the moment she wore no makeup. Her attire was a simple khaki shirt stuffed into hiking pants. High-top trail boots completed her dress. She wore no hat and now she stood there, whipping her black hair back in place.
"Think nothing of it!" I assured her. Then as an after-thought: "How did you learn to throw so accurately?"
She chuckled. "We used to hunt jack rabbits with rocks as children. It's something like swimming, once you learn you don't forget."
She completed the push-up hair-do, stuffed the comb in her shirt pocket.
"Steve, why were you in this particular canyon?"
It was a good question, and I suppose I should have answered it fully for her. Yet this little unseen mascot of mine which sometimes rides my shoulder in the guise of a green leprechaun was pecking at my ear, bidding me be cautious.
"Did you ever follow a creek?" I rationalied. "One bend leads to another, and pretty soon you're miles from home base?"
She shrugged. "Well, at least that's one answer-"
I reached forward, imprisoned one of her hands.
"What did you mean by that, Nan?"
Her smile seemed fixed. "Oh, I don't exactly know. Very few white men follow the creek even this far."
"Why?"
She didn't immediately answer, let her eyes rove the heights, the black basalt walls frowning down on the narrowing canyon.
"I suppose it's the desolation," she said at last. She gestured with her hands, as if she might in this manner paint a picture. "Utter desolation, the desert and that deepening canyon going on and on-and not a living thing."
Her young face sobered. I caught a somberness creeping into her voice.
"You sound bitter, Nan."
"I am bitter!" she said spiritedly. She pivoted so she faced the desert, back of us. "This is the land they herded my people into. This barren, ugly land-"
My grip on her hand tightened as an impulse struck me. This girl was far from a common person; she had vision, education, a certain charm. She was an Indian. Her people were desperately poor, deprived. How had she attained this advanced status? She was a girl I suddenly wanted to know more about.
"Nan, this is my day off," I said. "I would like nothing better than to take you into town. Perhaps we could have dinner together-"
"And then?"
She caught me with my guard down, it came so abruptly. "Why, nothing. I've got the jeep back on the rim. I'll motor you back here, any time you say-"
She didn't try to release her imprisoned hand. Her eyes were hard on mine. I had the awkward feeling she was reading my mind, bit by bit, in her silent evaluation. Then at last the tight smile again.
"All right," she agreed. "I'd like that. I've been with my grandfather's people for nearly a month without a break."
Another thought struck me so forcibly I had to ask it, blunt as it seemed:
"Nan, what in the world is a girl like you, pre sumably educated in the white man's school, a name in the world, doing in this hidden canyon?"
Her smile was enigmatical, but she made no attempt to answer my question.
"Could it be that you're tired of publicity, of everything that is phony and rotten in the 'beautiful girl' contests?"
"We'll talk about that later," she said.
I nodded.
"Will you wait here-thirty minutes?"
"I'll wait thirty minutes-or even sixty, if need be."
She smiled. And she was gone, walking down the creek with that free, swinging cadence to her hips that is never learned on city sidewalks with spiked heels.
That pool in the shade of the rim looked so inviting that on the spur of the moment I shed my own clothes and waded in. The water was remarkably cool, despite the heat of the surrounding desert. I was splashing quite contentedly when I got the provoking thought: what would I do now if she walked up, or returned before the thirty minutes The thought was still disturbing my brain cells when I heard her gay laugh. It was free and uninhibited now. I crouched down, hoping the water was deep enough to cover my loins. She came up to the pool's edge, her eyes glistening.
"Now you throw the rock!" she teased.
"Go away!" I said. And I meant it. But she didn't. She stood there, ogling me. "You look-almost beautiful," she said. "Slim and tanned, and muscles-"
I dipped my hand to the pool's bottom, hoping to come up with a good-sized pebble to toss at her. Suddenly she broke away, walked over to the ledge and retrieved her rifle.
"Forgot my protector," she said, "relax now, it'll be thirty minutes for certain, this time."
She was an Indian-the stoic Indian? My foot!
She was an uninhibited girl, as American as they come, a provocative young woman, every inch of her. Wait until I told Ben about her!
"Listen, Ben," I would say, in that breathless voice a man assumes when he is spilling a priceless story, "I rounded this bend in the creek, and there bathing in a shallow pool was this chick, a Maricopa maid, fairest of the fair, and naked as a newborn jay bird. Ben, she had the most amazing-"
I could see his frown, the 'don't-give-me-that-malarky' look on his bronzed, scholarly young face.
And he would have a point. This was crazy, man-real far-out. It could happen on TV, on some goony-zone fantasy show, but not in real life. It couldn't happen to Steve Hille. But it did.
She was here, hiding she said. Hiding from what? The soothsayers who had paraded her before the cameras? Or hiding from something else?
And that reminded me. There was something else hiding here. Not right here perhaps, but in this barren desert, which no one had ever found. Not right here, perhaps, but in this barren desert, which no one had ever found. I had the spot pin-pointed on a map. I had information which a hundred other people possessed-perhaps even more. But neither I, nor the hundreds of others hunting for the same thing, had ever found it. Not even a trace.
It was maddening, the very thought of it. Hundreds of people hunting for something that never was found.
Two years now they had hunted, searched, tracked. Nothing. One lost airplane.
Not a super-jet or a strato-liner. Just a small, two-place airplane.
But on board that tiny ship, when it had taken off from a private strip near Las Vegas, were two men-and a cool $800,000 in Uncle Sam's coin of the realm. All good greenbacks. Not counterfeit, but the real mazuma.
One of those men was my brother.
I had hunted, along with the others, after the reported crash. Then the fanfare died down. Periodically after that I had made lone safaris into the desert, to renew the search. But always there had been a time limit. I had to return because the small video layout we were nursing so carefully in suicide gulch (Los Angeles) needed day-by-day attention.
But now the video outfit had grown. The home office got along very well without me under the management of Lou Warren.
Ben and I were out here on the desert, holed up for as long as three months if need be, hunting.
Oh yes, we were shooting too. We had a lot of background footage to shoot for the morgue, and this was one of the finest spots in the world for flora and fauna of the desert. To any inquisitive goon visiting our camp, this was our alibi.
But the real reason was something bigger than producing video tape.
I wasn't advertising the fact, for various reasons.
Footsteps came up the canyon and suddenly there she was, a vision right out of desolation itself. I pulled in a big breath and held it, as one sometimes does when he is unduly excited. She was that kind of girl-exciting.
"Ben," I could hear myself explaining, "it's all true, every word I've been trying to tell you-"
And Ben's quick, sharp eyes, looking down my nose: "You haven't been drinking cactus juice, have you, Steve?"
Well, if he were here at this moment, he would know it was true. He would be just as amazed and incredulous as I, but he would know it was no desert mirage. She was real, in the flesh; and we had a date.
The sun was westering now, the heat less intense. Even so we were winded when we made the rim and climbed into the jeep.
Before we zoomed off she pointed to a speck on the flats, to the left of the jutting basalt. From here it looked like a small cabin, or someform of habitation.
"My grandfather's home," she said.
I couldn't conceal my surprise.
"How long has he lived there, Nan?"
"Since my grandmother died, three years ago."
"But this is the desert. Even a rattlesnake has a problem keeping alive in this barren pothole!"
Her smile was tight. "You forget something," she said. "We've lived in this desert all of our lives."
I wouldn't argue that. I started the jeep, headed toward Arroyo Seco.
And suddenly I was thinking of something else, a thrilling thought right out of the blue; if her grandfather had lived in this pothole for three years, perhaps he could tell me something about the mysterious plane crash.
Her hand was on my arm. "Why so serious all of a sudden, Steve?" I shrugged. "Oh, nothing-" She was persistent. "Want to tell me about it?"
I smiled. "Later, perhaps."
It was roughly twenty miles to Arroyo Seco. And in that distance, coming in from the desert over an unpaved road that was little more than a pack trail, we saw exactly nothing except the desert. Not a telephone pole, a house, or anything that even suggested human habitation, red or white. This could have been the earth after the big one dropped barren cinder.
Nothing. Just the arid land, and the alkali dust stirring up under the jeep's tires.
I believe that even she felt it, the stark emptiness of this land. For suddenly she half-turned in the seat, with a tight smile.
"Does it frighten you, Steve?"
"The emptiness?"
She nodded.
"Yes, I suppose it will always frighten me."
"It frightens even me. I seem to remember something that is very dim. The same scene keeps coming back, again and again. I was quite young in this dream, but there wasn't this barren land. There were trees, and grass, and blooming flowers scenting the air-"
That was an odd thing to say. I looked briefly at her face; she was dead serious.
"The Maricopas never were nomadic, were they, Nan?"
"No," she said.
"Then how do you account for this fantasy-that once you lived in a different type of country?"
"I wish I could account for it; I would have greater peace of mind."
We were in Arroyo Seco now, the one long street that was really the highway, the little cottages, the trailers; a few new business buildings, a shopping center so new it looked out of place. On the South edge of town was a roadside restaurant where the Mexican food was somewhat above par-if you like pepper and spices in everything but the coffee.
Two hours later, after much small talk and a leisurely dinner, we headed back to the desert over the same trail. It was dusk now. Once we left the main highway, the same reversion took place. No more traffic noises, no trucks roaring through, no street lights, nothing to indicate that man had ever trod here. It was uncanny, realizing that only a few hundred miles from here seven million people were trying to find elbow room.
She was more than an acquaintance now. In two hours' time two people can either blend into mutual acceptance of each other, or grow distant and cool. Between us there seemed to be a warm comaraderie cementing; it was sex attraction, and yet something deeper.
Perhaps it was the loneliness of the desert itself.
Perhaps it was a natural yearning, two people mutually attracted. Whatever it was I felt her magnetism, merely sitting there at my side. She might be a Maricopa Indian girl, but physically she was a golden gypsy wafted to my arms by some strange magic.
The track paralleled the rim now, a rather spectacular road in the pale light of the moon. I pulled up, leaned toward her, drew her into my embrace and kissed her.
Her lips were warm, alive; yet there was no response.
"Why did you do that, Steve?"
I shrugged. "I merely felt like it. So I put the feeling into action."
Her smile deepened, but she made no answer.
"Did you mind?" I asked at last.
"No, I didn't mind. Except-"
I waited, and she failed to explain. "Except what?"
"I have a job to do here," she said at last. "I have no idea how long it may take. I've forced myself to be dedicated to this one task. It comes before anything else in my life. Even a kiss might detour my objective-"
I sat back, grinned at her. "Well now, what kind of talk is that?"
"I suppose it sounds corny. But it isn't."
She was dead serious about something, evidently a problem she was facing, something of giant magnitude. I got my fingers under her chin, turned her face toward me. "Let's talk about it."
"I've known you only for a few short hours. We're strangers."
"Strangers?'"
"Well, almost strangers." Her face sobered. "Steve, I've kept this secret for two years. I meet you, and in the course of a few hours I feel a strange compulsion to tell it all to you-"
"Is that bad?"
"Well, it doesn't quite make sense. Does it?"
I felt a quickening at her words, one of those crazy hunches everyone gets now and then. Perhaps it's mental telepathy, or a photoflash by the subliminal mind at the use of a familiar word or phrase. She had said 'two years'. She had a secret locked in her heart for two years. Perhaps it meant not a thing; perhaps we had something in common, and didn't know it.
There was only one way to find out. I had to be the protagonist. I pressed her hand tighter now, tried to plumb the depths of her eyes.
"Nan, will you be honest with me?"
"Of course, Steve."
"I have an unusual job here, too. Would you care to share confidences?"
She thought that over.
"All right," she said at last. "The thing you tell me will not be repeated. And likewise, I'll expect the same confidence from you."
We shook hands. It might have looked corny, had there been someone to witness it. But it didn't seem corny to me.
"Two years ago a small private airplane crashed somewhere in this immediate area," I began. "It never was found. Despite the fact that the desert was combed by air and by searchers on foot over a long period of time, not even a torn-off fragment of aluminum ever came to light."
She sat there, looking at me as if she had seen a ghost
"There were two men in the plane," I concluded. "One of them was my brother, Larry."
The pallor was still in her face.
"The pilot of that plane was Johnny May," she said hollowly. "We were engaged to be married."
I had nothing to say at the moment; we sat there in shocked silence.
Coincidence?
I suppose you might scoff, and call it that. But looking at it objectively, coincidence had nothing to do with it. She was here, searching for the same thing I was. Some strange compulsion drove her, as it did me. Someone spun fortune's wheel, and two black balls rolled out of the slot. Nan and me. Two people with the same problem. Coincidence?
I pulled her into my arms, mashed my lips on her own. This time there was response. It built slowly, finally was a stinger. Her elongated breasts were mashing into my rib cage, her arms were sinews of unusual strength. The kiss was fast turning into ecstasy. At last she pulled away, perhaps a bit amazed at her own fervor.
"Steve, the money in that plane-about $800,000-was stolen from a Las Vegas casino. It was all so .hush-hush, but it was stolen!"
I nodded.
"I've got to know!" she said at last. And in the very vehemency of her words was the compulsion that had been driving her. "Who stole it-Larry or Johnny?"
"Both of them, don't you think?"
"I suppose so. Or could they both be innocent?"
I shook my head. "No, I don't think so."
"Oh, Steve!"
She was on the verge of tears. I merely held her closely, nuzzling her soft hair with my cheek.
"Two years, and not a trace of that plane," I said at last. "It's uncanny!"
She didn't reply.
"They saw it in Arroyo Seco, flying low and heading into the Potholes, in trouble. They saw it crash, even heard the explosion-"
"But no plane!"
I nodded. "It has to be in this area, Nan-against some canyon wall, or smashed against one of diose basalt columns-"
"But Steve, if that theory is right, someone would have found the wreckage. There has to be wreckage-"
I nodded in agreement. "It's inconceivable that it could have completely disappeared the way it did."
"Unless-" She hesitated, as if what she had intended to say seemed utterly ridiculous. "Unless in the badlands beyond the spring there still is some unexplored nook, some declivity into which a small plane might have fallen and disintegrated."
"Impossible!" I said at length. "The area has been combed, not once but dozens of times, with 'coptors and planes. I've walked it myself, every blind canyon, every foot of terrain that could hide a rattlesnake."
"So have I," she admitted.
"And we've found nothing."
Suddenly I was thinking of something she said before we went into town.
"Nan, didn't you tell me that your grandfather has lived out here on the mesa for three years?"
"Yes," she said. "You're wondering if he knows anything? He is quite deaf, Steve. He goes to bed when the sun sets. But even so, the explosion of the plane was great enough to waken him."
I was excited now. "Did he see anything-a fire after the explosion, debris, anything?"
"He immediately went down into the canyon. He saw nothing, found nothing. He has returned with me dozens of times, searching. We haven't unearthed a single clue."
Perhaps there wasn't a clue, but there was one encouraging thing. There were two of us now, seeking the same thing. Perhaps three, even.
I pulled her tighter. "Nan, we'll start anew, both of us, the first available day."
"I'd like that."
Her lips were back on mine. And suddenly I was visualizing her as I had seen her in the pool, the golden loveliness of her body.
I rationalized that it was the loneliness of the desert itself, or the fact that we were both emotionally upset. Whatever it was, I felt myself kissing her with tingling excitement. We both were quickening; this thing had reached-and passed-the point of no return.
I worked my hand up to her breast, loosened the buttons on her blouse. Her hand caught mine. "No, Steve."
"I need you, Nan. I hope we need each other." Her eyes probed mine. In the soft moonlight of the desert she looked more desirable than ever. "If I agreed, you'd think me a tramp."
I smothered the words with my lips.
"Honey, you'll never be a tramp to me."
My hand was on her now, caressing. I felt the tautness. A shiver ran through her body and she arched toward me, clutched me tighter. I bent my head, kissing her throat. When I touched her breast, she put her hands against my cheeks and pulled me tighter. I felt her need and no doubt she felt mine.
Words were of no consequence now. We might have been the last two lovers on the face of the earth, but out desires were age-old and violent.
The ecstasy was there, building each moment, the hot flush of desire that at last grows uncontrollable.
"Kiss me, Steve!"
She rolled into my arms, suddenly there was violence in her hips, we were together. Her lips were firebrands, sparking the lash of her tongue. And the ecstasy came up in a giant wave to engulf us....
It was gloriously over at last. We lay there in the hot sweat of physical exhaustion. I could hear her heart hammering against her rib cage. Nothing mattered at the moment, except the softness of her there in my arms, the fact that we had requited one another. And then it started all over again. This time we tempered the violence and desire, prolonging our little Utopia of love to the last precious second.
Somewhere on the rim came a haunting cry that was loneliness in all its impact, as only a coyote can send forth in nocturnal lament. But there was no loneliness between us; just a complacency that whatever the morrow would bring, we would face it together.