Deathwatch by Robb White Read Free Book Online Page B

but drinkable water in the radiator. They had walked away from the shade it could have given them, walked away from the evidence of trouble the search party would look for. And they had walked away in the daylight, in the sunlight, in the killing heat.
    When Ben found them it had almost made him cry to see how the mother had smeared lipstick on the faces of her children in a futile effort to keep the sun from burning the flesh off them.…
    Ben had always thought that he could survive in this desert he knew so well as long as he could move.
    He could move, if you called stumbling onthose torn feet moving. He could move for about twenty-four hours more, and that was all.
    All night long he had hoped that with the coming of day Madec would realize that he was making a fatal mistake. That to kill Ben out here would be far more dangerous than confessing the accident and taking his chances with a jury.
    Now Ben admitted to himself that Madec, as intelligent as he was, was too vain to give up. Vain and conceited and sure of himself, sure that he could convince the authorities that Ben had killed a man.
    Madec would tell a simple, convincing story. Ben had killed the man and when Madec had insisted on reporting it to the authorities had tried to kill him, too. But Madec had escaped to the Jeep and made his way back.
    Madec would tell it well, Ben decided. All the details would fit; he might even go so far as to wound himself to make it more convincing.
    Madec would see to it that all the evidence supported him. The old man, ruined by vultures by the time they found him, would be wearing his clothes again and his boots and hat. The two Hornet slugs would be easy to find.
    Ben would also have his clothes on. Madec would find him where he had at last dropped and would dress him and equip him—with empty canteens and gun and food.
    It was too late now for any reconciliation, too late to just walk off this mountain and go to Madec and beg for his life.
    He fought back the fear. As long as there’s water on this mountain, he told himself, I’m not dead.
    Tonight, he planned, when the moon goes down, I’ll go back to that catch basin. To keep Madec from seeing me I’ll crawl all the way there on my stomach.
    But I’ll get there.
    With the dry heat pressing in on him from every direction, Ben relaxed against the outcrop and forced himself to stop the squirrel cage thinking; to empty his mind and sleep.

6
    A T FIRST Ben didn’t know what had waked him, but he awoke with dread, as though some enemy was close on him, threatening him.
    His wounded cheek had swollen so badly that his left eye was completely closed and he could not, even with his fingers, open it enough to see out of it.
    It was still daylight, the sun seeming to be squatting on the western mountains, no longer moving down but staying there, pouring its heat on him.
    Then he heard the sound and realized that was what had waked him up. A tinkling sound. Of metal on rock.
    Pushing himself up a little, his head toward the sound and turned far enough to see with his right eye, he looked down.
    Ben could only see Madec’s head and shoulders and could not tell what he was doing.
    Pushing himself on up, pain throbbing into his legs, he looked around the outcrop.
    He could see Madec clearly now. The bigMagnum was propped not far from him against the cliff face, and Madec, his fancy bush jacket dark with sweat, was using the Jeep’s short-handled shovel.
    It was insulting, infuriating. And Ben felt a strange, weak, childish thing. Don’t
do
that, he silently begged. Don’t do that.
    Madec had shoveled most of the sand out of the catch basin and was sloshing out the rest, the sand-filled water looking dull and gray in the sunlight as it flew from the shovel and splashed down on the bare, sloping, hot stone. The water ran down the stone in a little shallow stream, vanishing as it ran.
    Madec shoveled and scooped until the basin was empty, the sand all around it drying fast in the