The Spirit

The mountain’s thunderstorm belches faded away by degrees. They would rig lines, bosun’s chairs, and a tem­porary bridge to traverse the gorge, Wallace reflected. Then they would rush to the lodge to find it gone. If they were lucky they would find bodies, too, but he would not bet a hog’s wart on that.

16

The avalanche hit the lodge like a gigantic ax, chopping away the roof and sun-­deck timbers and burying them on their way down the east face. Dust materialized out of the walls in a shroud that fuzzed the candlelight. The ceiling split over the door, disgorging plaster, asbestos insulation rolls, and electrical wiring. The rest of it shivered under the hammer of rocks. Cracks appeared and raced out to link up with each other. Duane Wood­ard scrambled under a table with Jason when his section of ceiling split and dumped muddy snow and the crumpled fender of Helder’s Cadillac on his table.

The avalanche muted to a sibilant hiss of smaller stones and straggler trees. Sheet ice from snow melted by friction and refrozen by the storm oozed through the ceiling gaps. The groans faded, and the walls of the game room held.

Duane Wood­ard and Jason moved the billiard table and pinball machine from the door. They opened it slowly, ducking debris cascading in. The corridor was now a parallelepiped, with angles of ceiling and wall bent toward the east. It was clogged with rocks, plywood, more insulation, and mud. The stairs led upward to nothing; the ground floor was a mass of rubble.

“Everybody all right?” asked Jason. “Martha?”

“Fine,” she answered in a tired voice. “What happened?”

“A mountain fell down on top of us. That’s what happened, lady,” grunted Wood­ard. He joined Jason by the rubble and looked at the stairs leading nowhere. “Half a mountain, anyhow. I bet that Indian had something to do with this.”

“No takers,” commented Jason. “Drake said that mine was full of old dynamite. Maybe he lit a stick and threw it at the thing.” He looked back at Martha Lucas. “Or something like that.”

She remembered Moon’s dark, fathomless face as he had looked at the leering grizzly earlier that night. A stuffed grizzly. A skin full of cotton. A spirit that wasn’t a spirit. When the gods died, so did the worshippers.

The furnace door was jammed open by a crushed door frame. Jason said, “Do you smell something?”

Wood­ard wiped his nose on his sleeve and sniffed. “Fuel oil, ain’t it? The tank must have busted.”

“Martha, what’s in there?”

“Generators,” she whispered. “Water tanks. Stuff like that. There’s a door leading—”

Jason hissed and held out his hand for quiet. A small, liquid tap came from the door. A splashy tap. It was followed by another, and mad joy seized Jason like a drug rush that overwhelmed his tension. “It’s her,” he whispered. “She must have got in before the avalanche hit.”

Jason found his gun on the floor. He slipped on his jacket and put the extra box of shells in the pocket. Then he grasped Martha’s arm and pulled her to her feet. “Upstairs. You and Wood­ard. Get going!”

“Leave her alone, Jason,” said Wood­ard in a cool, low voice.

“No way. You hear me, Wood­ard?” Jason’s eyes were wild.

Wood­ard peered down the hall at the furnace room. “I don’t know about that. Somebody ought to back you up . . .”

“I don’t need anybody’s help.”

Wood­ard glanced at Martha and scratched unhappily at his chin, wondering how to handle the situation. “Mr. Jason, I know I hit her a couple of times with the twenty-two.”

“Spitballs, Wood­ard! Twenty-­two-­caliber spitballs!” He held up his .38. “Couple of these. That’s what it takes.”

“Then let the Rangers do it,” pleaded Martha. “Forget it, Raymond, you’ve gone far enough with this.”

“She killed Helder, didn’t she?” said Jason, stung by her tone. “And you. She nearly got you—”

“What do you care!” Martha cried. “I mean, what the hell do you care about me or Helder or Moon or anybody but yourself?”

“Keep your voice down!”

“You’ve been shooting them, you’ve been stalking them, you’ve been setting traps for them . . .” Her voice rose. “It’s your fault they’re killing people, Raymond, it’s not them, it’s you! Moon was right, you’re just like him! What do you want from them! You’re—”

Jason slapped her.

“None of that, Jason!” said Duane Wood­ard, picking up a broken chair.

Jason made a motion with the gun. “Everybody calm down. You stay put, Wood­ard. She’s hysterical. Look at her! Take her upstairs.”

Martha walked past Jason to the corridor. Wood­ard tossed away the chair with a grimace. “It’s okay by me. Hell, you want a Bigfoot rug that bad—”

“I do. I’ll be up with one in ten minutes.”

“Yeah.” Wood­ard sounded unconvinced.

Another small tap from the furnace room. She was still there.

He found a flashlight in one of the drawers. The cold had numbed his fingers, and he had to exercise them to get the circulation going. Firing a handgun was a matter of wrist control. Dozens of tiny interlocking muscles determined whether a shot went true.