The Buried Pyramid (45 page)

“I’ll make it,” he said, fiercely. “Chad Spice did it in goatskin slippers and with what water he could carry. I will make it!”

He did make another day, though Eddie insisted they rest in the pavilion when the sun was at its highest, and Stephen was clearly too uncomfortable to protest this coddling. Neville bore but impatiently with the delay. The mid-day sun was too brilliant for him to be sure, but he thought he’d seen a thin line of something shadowing the horizon to the northwest. He said nothing, not even to Jenny who he suspected had sharper eyes than his own. If they had to turn back, he didn’t want Stephen to know they might have been within reach of their destination.

That eve-ning the westering sun made certainty impossible, but at dawn he felt sure. Even without his field glasses, Neville could see what seemed to be one towering outcrop, and possibly another.

Eddie came to him as he was lowering the field glasses.

“That certainly might be the statues,” he agreed. “What I want to tell you is that we’re going through water at a much higher rate than I’d planned—and I’d never planned on rationing too strictly with you three children of the land of mists and fogs in my charge.”

Neville thought fleetingly how ten years in Egypt had colored even Eddie’s En-glish.

“We’re at the half-way point in our supplies?” he asked.

“Just about, at least for water,” Eddie admitted. “If Stephen keeps needing liquid at the same rate, we’re definitely there before to-night—and I won’t hide that Jenny has been drinking more, too. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve filled her canteen when she hasn’t been looking.”

Neville raised his eyebrows.

“It was that or have her collapse on us,” Eddie said, as if confessing a fault. “She’s kept her peace and sucked on a pebble, and dosed that kitten from her own share, but she’s no camel. For that matter, neither are you. Head hurting? Muscles stiff?”

Neville nodded. “Nothing I can’t take.”

“I’m sure, but I know I don’t much like trying to get all of you back by myself.”

“Fair.”

Neville took one more longing look toward the rocky outline.

“We’d better tell the others.”

But those others had plans of their own.

Stephen licked his swollen lips, then seemed to regret the gesture as a sign of weakness.

“We’ve seen the statues,” he said, his voice croaking. “We can’t turn around now.”

He lurched to his feet, an act that if meant to demonstrate his strength failed to do so, but one that left no doubt as to his determination.

“We could go back to the Hawk Rock,” Neville suggested. “Let you recover, let your sunburn heal. Then we could try again.”

He didn’t think they’d do any such thing, but he owed Stephen a chance to save face.

Stephen wasn’t fooled.

“Chad Spice’s journal said he found both water and food,” he reminded them. “Tame goats.”

“That ‘tame’ is one of the things that worries me,” Eddie put in. “Spice seemed to think that the goats were tame because they were unaccustomed to human contact, but the reverse is more likely.”

“Bedouin?” Jenny asked.

“Likely,” Eddie said.

“I don’t care,” Stephen protested. “I want to go on. One more day, that’s all it’s going to take. I know it.”

“There’s no promise of either food or water,” Neville reminded him gently.

“I know, and I don’t care.”

Eddie shrugged, and they went on.

They were setting up the pavilion as shelter from the mid-day sun, when Stephen gave a croaking shout and pointed to the sky. A single hawk, every feather delineated against the cruel blue, was riding lazy circles on some wind unfelt this close to the ground.

“A hawk!” Stephen cried. “A hawk. ‘Under the watching eye of the hawk, the homecoming is joyous.’ ”

It amazed Neville how heartening that one glimpse of something alive and moving could be. The hawk remained above all the while they waited out the worst of the sun’s intensity, then when they broke camp split off to the northwest.

“Is it leading us?” Jenny asked in quiet amazement.

These were the first words she’d spoken other than to ask Stephen how he felt. Neville was shocked when he noticed the dark circles that had formed, bruise-like, under her eyes, and the hollows under her cheekbones.

No one said anything, but they knew that at least some of them had passed the point of returning even to the relative safety of the Hawk Rock. The desert, even in its comparative winter mildness, was sucking moisture from them, leaching it away even in the gentle breeze that created an illusion of comfort.

Eddie readied the patient camels and they struggled on. Neville tried to sense whether his mount was aware of water nearby, but he felt none of the eagerness that had quickened its step when they had neared the Hawk Rock. Did that mean there was no water, or merely that the camel knew enough to husband its strength?

Gradually Neville’s field glasses showed him something at the base of the stone outcrop, not a pedestal or building, but a hill or rise washed with sand about its base. As they came closer, he saw they had come to the base of a rocky rise, steep, and slick with accumulated sand. It extended as far as they could see in either direction, curving away so that they could not tell whether they faced a ridge or a circular barrier.

One thing was clear. The camels weren’t going up that. Even a human was going to find it a hard climb.

They arrived near dusk. Stephen was no more than semi-conscious, but his camel continued to carry him as if he was any other burden. Jenny was looking feverish, her eyes unnaturally bright. Neville knelt his camel and walked stiffly over to the rock barrier.

“If there’s water,” he said, “it’s beyond that.”

“We’ve enough for to-night,” Eddie said.

“And tomorrow?” Neville asked.

“We’ll have nothing but camel blood.”

16

Four Watchers

Jenny couldn’t help herself. She wanted to stay awake, wanted to help treat Stephen’s heat exhaustion, but she was too tired. She sat down for just a moment, and awoke only to the cool of the night and restful darkness.

Someone, Eddie, she thought, was leaning against one of the poles to which they had secured the pavilion, just visible in the moonlight. She caught a whiff of his cigarette and was sure.

Rising to her feet, noticing as she did so that someone had removed her boots, hat, and gun belt, then stacked them neatly at hand, Jenny teetered slightly, her head spinning. For the first time since waking she noticed how dry her mouth and lips were. Somewhere during that day’s horrible ride she’d stopped noticing. It must be an improvement that she could notice, though it didn’t much seem like one right now.

She didn’t see her canteen, so she walked over to Eddie. He turned at the sound of her approach, and she saw he was holding Mozelle. The tawny kitten sat upright on the hand he held cradled against his chest, looking more like an ornament on a shelf than a living creature.

Eddie ground out his cigarette beneath a boot toe, and gestured with his head toward a water bag hanging from one of the tent posts.

“Careful with how you pour it,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “That’s all we have.”

Jenny tried not to show how appalled she was, but something must have come through.

“Had to give it to Stephen—and Neville—or lose one of ’em,” Eddie answered her unvoiced question.

“Uncle Neville?” Jenny asked, keeping her own voice soft with an effort.

“Gimpy idiot, him with that injury barely healed, decided to try climbing the rocks when I was busy with the gear,” Eddie said, fond irritation in his voice. “Ankle’s sprained badly. Might be a break. Had to wrap it in wet cloths to cool it. Hope you don’t mind. I borrowed some opium from your kit.”

Jenny’s hand shook, but she remembered the water and steadied it.

“Probably just a sprain,” Eddie said. “Didn’t feel the bones grating.”

“And I slept through that?”

“You and Stephen both,” Eddie said. “Don’t blame you. This has been harder than it should have been. We’ve had plenty of water. You’re pretty tough for a city girl. Stephen’s game. I don’t know . . . Ever since we left the Hawk Rock, something’s been off.”

The water, warm as it was and tasting of goat leather, refreshed Jenny. She crossed to where Eddie stood, and realized he was studying the rocky ridge. The moonlight was hitting it just right, illuminating it, making all the shadows twice as dark and twice as sharp as seemed natural.

“That where Uncle Neville sprained his ankle?”

“No, he tried over there.” Eddie paused a long while, his free hand scratching between Mozelle’s ears. “I took a camel out once I was sure you all weren’t coming around for a while, rode around the edges of the curve. Can’t say for sure, but I don’t think there’s a break in this. I think it goes all the way around.”

“Like the crater of a volcano,” Jenny said. “Can’t be, though. This is sandstone.”

Eddie nodded. Jenny felt a sudden rush of excitement.

“I should try to climb it now,” she said. “While it’s lit by the moon but the rocks are cool. They’ll heat up pretty fast come sunrise.”

Eddie nodded.

“One of us should,” he agreed.

Jenny looked at him levelly.

“I’d better. If I get hurt, you might just manage to get one or two of us out. If you get hurt, there’s no way I can do the same.”

Eddie didn’t even attempt to disagree.

“True. Why not wait until morning?”

“There’s light enough now, if I’m careful, and I promise I will be careful. Besides, if there isn’t water somewhere up there, you’re going to need to start us back to the Hawk Rock right quick. We’ll need what cool there is if we’re to have a chance. Then I figure one of us will stay with Uncle Neville and Stephen when they can’t go on, and the other will press on for the Hawk Rock and try to bring back water. That about right?”

Eddie nodded again. He seemed like an oracular statue standing there, Mozelle a carved figure in his hands. Jenny realized that he was fighting a gallant impulse to refuse her, because he knew they both were right, and if there wasn’t water up there, or if she got hurt, he was the only one who had a chance of saving them.

She didn’t press him to speak, just crossed back to her gear. Gloves, boots, a couple bandannas, an empty canteen, a length of line twined around her waist, just in case there was something worth lowering. She paused at the gun belt, then lifted it, checked that the weapons were clear of sand, and strapped it on.

“Never know,” she said, meeting Eddie’s silently questioning gaze. “Goats might not be so friendly this time. Hold onto Mozelle for me. Don’t want to step on her.”

Jenny started her climb without further comment, positioning herself so her shadow wouldn’t block the moonlight. Immediately as she began trying to find reliable foot and hand holds, it seemed darker, so much so that she glanced up to see if some vagrant cloud had covered the moon. The sky remained as remorselessly clear as ever.

She knew it was her own nervousness, the thought of Uncle Neville’s sprained—hopefully only sprained!—ankle that was making it seem darker than it was. She cast her memory back to her mother teaching her rockclimbing in the New Mexico Territory on rocks not too different from these.

“Test every hold before you trust it, Jenny. Don’t forget you can use your knees to bridge a gap. On a slant, let your weight help you secure your hold, don’t fight it. Don’t ever reach blind into a hole or crevice. You don’t know who might be sleeping there.”

Jenny wondered if Uncle Neville had the least idea what kind of woman his sister had become when she’d transformed herself from English lady to American doctor’s wife—American nurse—American mother—American rancher.

She didn’t think he had the least idea, and resolved to tell him, little bits over time so he wouldn’t think she was trying to teach him how to be her guardian. He’d really been trying, poor dear.

I wonder if suddenly finding himself almost a parent of a grown woman is what made him so susceptible to that conniving bitch Audrey Cheshire?

Jenny had to dismiss this immediately as unfair. Lady Cheshire wasn’t exactly young, but she wasn’t old either, and she had ways that made youthfulness seem a disadvantage.