Shadow Mountain – Part 2

Chapter 9

She stood by the side of the cave.  Her clothes, jeans and gingham shirt, were the same as the second time he’d seen her, but this time only a minor tear showed on the side of the slacks.  She brought no extra clothes with her, he thoughtCa possibly disastrous mistake for someone used to the mountains.  But her hair was combed, her face and arms clean, and the tight lines at the corners of her eyes had cleared.

“I came up looking for you,” he said, trying to collect himself.

“I know.  I was watching you.”

“I wanted to come back sooner, but couldn’t get away.  What about the infection from the thorn?” he asked.

“It’s cleared up.  You did a good job.”

This day, he thought, I won’t push it.  I’ll take my time before asking her to come down.  He motioned toward his pack.  “I brought food.  Could I join you‑‑ for a while?”

She bit her lip.  Then, the lines in her forehead relaxed.  “Not here.  I’ll show you.”

Puzzled, he hunched his pack onto his shoulders.  She waited quietlyCthen turned.  With startling speed she was headed up the trail that led into the back country.

She was already far ahead by the time he started after her.  Beyond the trailcamp, several times he had to break into a run to keep up.  It seemed to him that her feet didn’t touch the ground as she glided over the path.  He was chasing an illusion.

Once in a while she looked back to make sure he was still following.  At a point where the trail broadened, she finally slowed.  He caught up and walked by her side.

The path here sliced between tall groves of cedar, spruce, and yellow pine.  The noonday sun filtered in sparkling rays through the overhead evergreen ceiling and painted a mosaic of shadows on the trail ahead.

As he walked by her side, Luke became aware of an unfamiliar sense of peace.  The hectic problems on General Med Six A and Six B were forgotten.  His old world of schedules and plans and goals disappeared in the smoky haze far below.  There were only the forest, and the clear skies, and her next to him.  Every once in a while he’d turn to the side and look at her with wonder.  He didn’t speak.  He didn’t want to do anything that might break the spell.

His eyes stayed trained ahead.  He tightened his hands and forced himself to look.

She was studying the path.  The breeze lifted her hair from her shoulders.  A faint tint of red covered her cheekbones and broke their smooth tan.  Her face in its concentration was composed, confident.

She sensed his gaze, and turned toward him.  A slight smile crossed her lips.  With long, slender fingers, she brushed hair back from her forehead before she turned to the trail ahead.

She was again a distance in front of him when suddenly she stopped.  Ahead of her a stag stepped from the forest.  It might have been the same stag they’d previously seen at the campsite, but if so, its family wasn’t with it this time.  The stag gazed at her a moment, then turned and disappeared into the trees on the other side of the trail.

Luke watched, transfixed.  He was in her world.  She was as familiar here as he was in the halls of University Hospital.  He thought of Marilyn Carruthers’ descriptions of Laura Arigael‑‑ fragile… studious… not a word that she’d ever been in the mountains….

She signaled him to come up.  Her face was intent as she looked around.  “The deer showed us the turn‑off,” she said.

She left the trail at the spot where the deer had first come out, and motioned him to follow.  Again they traveled cross‑country through trees and brush, climbing steeply uphill.  Sometimes she’d stop for a moment to let him get his breath or have time to catch up.  She found openings and passages through dense growth that appeared impenetrable.

In time, they heard the sound of water, and shortly afterwards arrived at a creek.

She stopped and turned to him.  Uncertainty showed in her eyes.  “Do you like it?”

They were in a clearing where white granite rocks, scoured to a fine sheen by cascading water, stepped down in a series of falls.  The wind had quieted again.  Sunlight filtered in narrow shafts through the trees and made the water glisten as it poured over the rocks into a pool.  Fingers of fern and wild iris reached toward the water.  Their roots fed by the stream, the surrounding Jeffrey pine and incense cedar stood taller than the forest beyond them.

He took in a deep breath.  The mountain air was crisp and fresh.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d breathed so free.  “It’s perfect,” he said.

They sat on rocks by the streamside.  He spread apples, sourdough, cheese, summer sausage, paper plates, and plastic glasses on a flat rock between them.  On a whim he’d packed a bottle of wine; he drew it out and anchored it in the stream to chill.  For the first time, she laughed.  Her face lit up, eyes bright, cheeks glowing.  “I haven’t seen anything like this in‑‑ oh, such a long time!”

As he gazed at her he wondered at the sense of aliveness he felt.  The sky was a rich blue.  All around him he heard the sounds of the mountain: the whisper of wind in the canopy of pine, the trill of two Hermit Warblers overhead, the splash of water pouring over a rockfall, the busy chatter of a pika.  “I once thought I knew this area‑‑” he gestured in a half circle over the creek‑‑ “but I’ve never found this.  It’s as if I’m seeing everything for the first time.”

“It’s my favorite place,” she said.

He reached for an apple, sliced it into quarters, and laid the slices on a paper plate.  “It’s clear that you grew up in the mountains.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“I grew up in Houston.  I never even saw a trail until ten years ago when I came west for college.”

ADo you have brothers and sisters?@

AI=m it.  My folks still live in Houston, where a railroad crossing is considered a hill.@

She laughed, then took a slice of apple and bit into it.  “Where=d you go from there?”

“I was introduced to the Sierra when I was an undergraduate at Stanford,” he said.  “It was like finding a new world that I never knew existed.  I began to look forward to every long weekend I could get away.”

He reached for the plastic glasses and poured.  “In medical school I didn’t have time to get back to the Sierras.  But at times I’d become so restless I felt I had to get away to keep my sanity.  I tried to find places near Los Angeles I could escape to, if only for a few hours.”  He handed her a glass.  “This became my favorite‑‑ here, on Echo.  I could come up just for a day, yet it was remote enough to let me feel I was far away from the crowds.  I’d come here and daydream.”

She smiled.  “I can understand the feeling.”  She lifted the glass to her mouth.  Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully as she sipped.  “You said, `during those years’.  What about since?”

Yes, he thought, what about since?  How many times had he paced the sidewalks near the med center trying to get enough air into his lungs to ease the closed in feeling?  He remembered the urgency with which he’d planned that first trip up the mountain twelve days ago.  “My first two years of residency I couldn’t find time to get away.”

“You must have been very busy,” she said softly.

“Perhaps more than I had to be.”  His eyes dropped down to the stream.  “I think I was caught in a trap I didn’t know how to get out of.”

“I’m very sorry.”

He was startled by the softness and emotion in her voice.  He looked up and found her gazing at him with eyes that brimmed with compassion.  He had the feeling– almost the certainty– that she understood the thoughts he’d struggled to put into words.

But he’d come up here to find out about her — and he’d done all the talking.  “What about you?” he said.  “How did you become so at home in the mountains?”

She looked down at the cover of moss between the granite rocks.  “I grew up in Portland.  Mount Hood was my backyard.  I knew practically every trail on it.”

“Your parents’ house?”

Her forehead wrinkled in concentration.  “Right now, that seems so long ago I can scarcely remember it.”  She paused.  “Just my father and me.  My mother died– when I was five.”

“Can you remember her?”

“Not really.  Sometimes I have memories that are lovely, but I can’t hold onto them.”

“Do you have any pictures of her?” he said.

“Only two.”  She smiled sadly.  “Sometimes, I look in a mirror and think I look like her– I mean, like she looks in her pictures– and I feel good about myself.”  She gazed back down at the stream.  “But then I come back to reality and realize it’s just one of those vague family resemblances. And my eyes see what I want them to see.”

“What about your father?” he said.

She sucked on her lip.  “He introduced me to the mountains.  I’d been going on hikes with him since I was old enough to remember.  I can still picture the two of us walking on Mount Hood while he carried two sleeping bags tied to his pack.  I was carrying a backpack myself by the time I was eight.”  Her face brightened.  “He found an old deserted campsite on Mount Hood called `Camp Ravenwood.’  Practically no one else knew it existed.  We’d go to it and camp out for a weekend.  He and my mother used to go there even before I was born– he said it was her favorite place.  And later, after I went off to school, he’d go there himself.  He used your phrase– `to daydream.'”

The sound of water cascading and bubbling over the rocks was a backdrop to her words.  He leaned forward.

She took another sip of wine, and laughed.  “My first summer between years at high school, Dad and I went up together into the Himalayas.  Would you believe it– I climbed a twenty-thousand foot peak!”  Her eyes glowed.  “He gave me a secret name, `Rayana.’  It was the Sherpas’ name for the spirit of the mountain.  I still have my locket with the name engraved on it.”  She reached for the oval gold locket hanging from her neck.

Rayana.  He remembered wondering about the locket when he first found her at the fireplace-cave.  The name fit.  At this moment, with the stream sparkling as it cascaded over the rocks, and the sun glistening gold off her dark hair, she carried the spirit of the mountain.

He had no idea what he was searching for, but a deep longing filled him.  It was as if she promised answers that could explain feelings he’d never understood but had struggled with since his early years in River Oaks Academy, feelings that now drove him from a crowded room, that sometimes made him trigger his pager so he’d have an excuse to get away from some of the interminable meetings and conferences.

As she lifted her glass to her mouth she became aware of his gaze, and flushed.  She set the glass on a rock and hugged her knees against her chest.

He forced his eyes from her and gazed into the creek.  “I guess that I’ve missed being here more than I realized.”

She answered softly.  “I’m glad you came back.”

He looked up.  Suddenly she appeared so alone, so vulnerable.  A feeling of urgency struck him.  Dammit, he was a doctor and she was sickCher life was in as much danger as was the life of any patient he had in the hospital.  He had to convince her to come back with him.

But he had to tread carefully.  “Do you ever go up with your father?”

From the wet sand she broke off a reed, poked it into the stream.  He watched the water swirl around it.  “Not since I was in Oregon,” she said.

“Does he work for the Forest Service?”

With the reed she stirred the fine silt on the floor of the creek.  Ribbons of gray smoke spiraled beneath the surface.  “He taught History at Oregon.  But he loved the mountains of the Cascades– and he knew them better than did most of the forest rangers.  He’d organize trips where he taught rock-climbing and survival techniques to groups of students.  We spent every summer in the Cascades.  And then he died.@

Luke had heard nothing of her father=s death.  For a moment he debated asking her his first name, but he had the feeling he was getting into a subject he should postpone.  Her identity was already in a precarious state.  AI=m so very sorry,@ was all he said.

AIt was on the mountain.  Mount Hood.  In an avalanche three years ago.  My sister died with him while he was trying to save her.@

Luke watched as she continued slowly stirring the silt on the floor of the creek.  “He sounds like he was wonderful.”

Her face clouded.  “He was.  So was my sister Jessica.”

“Your sister?”

Needles of light filtered through the overhead tree cover and played upon her face.  “I haven=t thought of it since I killed Laura.@  She frowned, staring hard into the water.

A light wind started up.  The sunlight suddenly dimmed behind a fast‑moving layer of gray clouds.  Aspen leaves rustled overhead like a whispered warning.  He realized she’d gone too far for him to stop her.

She lowered her head into her hands.  Her hair streamed over them.  “I would never want him to know I was a murderer.@

He tried to keep the fear that had sprung up inside him from spilling over into his voice.”  He reached for her hand.  “Come back with me.”

She gazed at him with sorrowful eyes.  “I can’t.”  Her face wavered in the slanting tree‑filtered rays of the afternoon sun.  It began to fade, as it had faded in the dream.

He was losing her.  He felt it with hopeless certainty as he pleaded, “Please, Laura.”

“You called out my name earlier.”

“I called out Holly in desperation that I might get you to respond.”

Her answer was dull, resigned– her hand lifeless.  “Laura was my closest friend.  She had become my sister.  And I gave Laura the injection that killed her.”

He gripped her hand harder, as if he could hold it tightly enough to stop her from slipping away.  “Come with me.  You can’t stay here.”

“I know the mountains.  I’ll be all right.”

“It’s October.  The nights are already cold.  In a while they’ll be freezing.  People will quit coming.  You’ll have no source of food.”

She pulled her hand away.  “I can’t leave.”

“I’ll see that you’re all right.  I’ll take care of you.”

She shook her head.

He could no longer rein in his frustration.  His voice rose.  “You’ve got to listen to me!  Holly was the one who died, and she killed herself.   Dr. Salder proved that you were drugged with LSDV, and it’s left your memory distorted.  You’re here because of that.”

She sprang to her feet.  “You don’t understand!  The police were fooled, and Elliott Salder would say anything if he thought it would help me.  I killed her.  I gave Laura the injection.”

He jumped up.  “But you are Laura!”

She looked frantically around, like a cornered wild animal.  He reached for her.  Her body arched backward.  He struggled to hold her, but she shook free.

He leaped forward to catch her, but she was gone, swallowed in the forest.

He called out her name, louder and louder, until he was shouting.  All that returned was the echo.

He stood in the deserted clearing, in the lengthening shadows of late afternoon.  Finally, he left the stream.  He traveled numbly through the forest.  He had no idea how much time had elapsed before he stumbled onto the trail.

He found his way back to the trailcamp, the lonely ruins of Moorfield Lodge, and waited by the cave.  Evening came.  Desolately, he realized that he’d ruined his bestCpossibly his onlyCchance.  Hopelessly he waited.  Finally, he left his jacket at the fireplace cave where she could find it; and with the help of a nearly full moon, he made his way down the mountain.

But of one thing he was certain.  He wouldn’t give up.  As long as there was a chance she was alive, he’d keep trying.

Luke arrived weary and despondent at his apartment.

A message from Vivian awaited him on the answering machine.  “I tried to reach you at the hospital this afternoon, honey.  I’ll be back from my meeting by ten.  Give me a call then.”

He glanced at his watch.  2:10 AM.  He’d call her from the hospital later that morning.

He tossed restlessly in bed, rehashing the day.  Never had he been more dissatisfied with himself.  In his attempts to convince her to come down from the mountain he’d been clumsy and ineffectual.  Worse.  In his zeal, he’d squandered her trust.  Next time, she’d be afraid and wouldn’t let him find her.

Finally, he got up, went to open the window and let in some air.  The street lamps painted the tenement-like buildings a dusty orange.  Large trucks crawled the early morning streets like caterpillars.  Toward the north, the dimly lit gray tower of University Medical Center could barely be made out.

He gazed out sightlessly.  Somewhere in the midst of his recriminations, another problem nagged at him.  What would he tell Vivian when he called?

He=d put that off awhile.

                                                                               Chapter 10

Luke’s first call the next morning was to Elliott Salder.  Salder was quiet for a few seconds after Luke finished, then sighed.  AWith the LSD found in her cup, the memory distortion must have been very severe.@  His voice dropped.  AOf course, it’s my fault that a young post-graduate student was left with access to it.@

AYou’re convinced then that Laura was in the office before Holly died?@ Luke said.

AShe had been.  Police found an observer who saw her tearing from the building well before the estimated time of Holly=s death.  She was heading for the highway, not her apartment area.  Like I said, Holly must have slipped the LSD in her tea in hopes it would weaken her resistance to taking the RS41, which she was already determined to try.@

AEven worse,@ Luke said, AI had a chance to gain Laura’s confidence and blew it.”

Salder answered firmly.  AYou=ve done a fine job.  No one could have done more.@

Throughout the morning, Luke struggled to concentrate on patients’ symptoms, nurses’ reports, lab read‑outs.  He drifted back to Echo Mountain during the meticulously detailed history and physical presented by his medical student on a seventy‑five year old alcoholic with emphysema, cirrhosis, diabetes, hypothyroidism, cataracts, hemorrhoids, psoriasis, and arthritis.  He didn’t come back to life until he answered a page and heard the voice of Marilyn Carruthers.

“Did you find her?” she asked.

“Yes.”  He fumbled for more to say.  “I was going to call you.”

“Is she all right?”

“I think so.  She ran off when I asked her to come down.”

“Do you now feel that you know who she is, Dr. Burnam?”

“She=s Laura.@  He told her about Salder=s description of memory distortion from the LSD traces found in the teacup.  ASomehow, this was slipped into her drink.  It could have been Holly who did it.  Even SalderChowever, after meeting him, I doubt it.”

“I checked the official school records on Laura .  She=s not only listed as a post-grad student in Library Science, but also as a university employee.”

“I know about her work in the animal research lab,” Luke said.

“Brigham Doyle is the name of her supervisor,” Marilyn Carruthers said.  “He’s operations manager of the department.”

ADo you have his phone number?@

Brigham Doyle could see Luke at 2:00 that afternoon

Luke hurriedly phoned Vivian from the nurses= desk.  Her secretary at Kennedy Memorial Hospital immediately put him through.

“They connected me to your intern, Traverson,” Vivian said.  “He changed his story about where you were at least three times.”

“I spent most of the day at the medical school library,” Luke said.  “Preparing a paper for next week’s grand rounds.”  He squirmed on the lab stool at his lie.

“I was stuck late too, with the Credentials Committee review,” she said.  “What does tonight look like?”

“I’m on call, Viv.  How `bout tomorrow night.  I’ll pick you up at the hospital.”

He excused himself early from rounds with the attending physician, ran to X‑ray to review the morning films, stopped by Respiratory Therapy to get a run‑down on arterial blood gases, dashed back to the wards to update progress notes and write orders for IV fluids, oxygen flows, and ventilator settings.  He ran through the rest of the cases with Treverson and the medical student, and was out of the hospital by one‑thirty.

Brigham Doyle’s office in the Administration Building was roomy and sumptious compared to Marilyn Carruthers’ cramped quarters.  A computer terminal rested on his wide oak desk.  Partially filled bookshelves lined the walls.  The room carried an overly sweet smell of pipe tobacco.

Doyle was a paunchy, round‑faced man in his early fifties.  The whites of his eyes were streaked with red.  His fingers moved constantly‑‑ strumming, interlocking, lifting a pen and laying it down again, turning the brass ashtray on his desk.

Luke explained to him that he was a friend of Laura Arigael from Portland, and for the sake of her family was trying to find some of the details surrounding the recent tragedy.  He told Doyle of his first finding Laura on Echo Mountain.

“Most tragic.  Most tragic.@  Doyle made a clucking sound with his tongue.  ALaura had a part-time job in our animal lab, but she was so effective with the little creatures that she essentially became head of the department.  Were you quite close to her?”

The image of Laura sitting by the streamside flooded him. “Yes.”

“Well, I realized it wasn’t like her not to show up, not even to call.@  He added morosely, AAnd her friend Holly, who often helped out in the lab, had died.  We have had quite a problem.@

“Was Laura involved in research?” Luke asked.

“Principally with Dr. Elliott Salder.  You see, Laura is our animal keeper.  Our department is heavy in animal behavior research‑‑ the usual white mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs.  Two chimpanzees.  A number of the psychologists work with them.  LauraCwell, as you undoubtedly knowCshe’s an unusual young lady.  I thought it was just me,  but I’ve spoken to many of the professors in the department and they had the same idea.  Animals have a strange affinity for her.  She has a special talent, Dr. Burnam.  It sounds a bit fanciful, butCit’s almost as if she can talk with the animals.”

Yes, Luke thought, I’ve been through that with both Carruthers and Halder, and I’ve certainly seen it myself.  “How long has she worked here?”

“About six months.  Our previous animal lab keeper completed his doctorate and left for a position back east shortly before Memorial Day.”

ADo you have a picture of her?@

*     AI have photos of each from personnel files, but they=re at least a year old.@  Doyle pulled out two photos.  AI=m told that initially there was some question as to which young lady had died.@

Luke rubbed his chin.  AThey do look alike.  He pulled out a copy of the framed photo taken from Laura=s apartment of the two of them.  AOne is wearing a locket.  Can you tell which?@

Doyle looked at him helplessly.  AThe picture is slightly blurred.  I can=t be sure.@

“Do you know of anyone else I could contact about her?”  Luke asked.

Doyle drew on his unlit pipe.  It emitted no tobacco smell, and Luke suspected that Doyle didn’t actually smoke, but used the pipe like a pacifier.  “Now, where was I?” Doyle said.  “Oh yes, she’s certainly attractive.  If I were even fifteen years younger, I’d be most envious of you.  And it’s interesting‑‑ she’s not a large young lady, but she’s deceptively strong and vigorous for her size.  She handled fifty pound bags of feed as if they were loaves of bread.”

“What about her relatives?” Luke asked.

AAs far as Laura is concerned, we have no close relatives listed.  Apparently, both parents had died.  We did try to reach an aunt in Portland.  Laura’s file listed her Aunt Charlotte there as her closest relative.  We’ve had no answer when we call.  Have you spoken to her aunt lately?”

“I’ve been away from Portland for a few months.”  Luke no longer squirmed when he lied.  “I’d like to phone her.  Could I get her number from you?”

“That should be no trouble.”  He laid his pipe on a clean ash tray, rummaged through a file drawer in his desk, and came up with a folder.  He thumbed through it.  “Here it is, `Charlotte Dunne’.”  He jotted a number on a sheet from his notebook, tore it out, and handed it to Luke.  ABut, as I said, we haven’t been able to reach anyone at the listed number.@

“Would any of the faculty members know more about her?” Luke asked.

“I doubt it.  The only one Laura really worked closely with was Dr. Salder.  You may have heard what happened to his wife Adrianne before he came here?”

“The explosion in the pharmacology lab?”

“An unbelievable tragedy.”  Doyle picked up his pipe and gestured at Luke with it.  ADr. Salder came to the department two years ago.  I=d already been here a couple years.  The department finances were in terrible shape‑‑ there were fifty faculty members, spending like mad, no central record‑keeping, not a financially trained person among them.  It was my job to straighten things out, and I must tell you, I had my work cut out for me.”

He clamped his pipe back in his mouth.  “Let’s see, where were we?  Oh yes.  Dr. Salder.  He was still at University of Washington when I came here.  Adrianne was one of his graduate students.  While they were at Washington, she got her PhD and they married.  I met her at a weekend administrative meeting in San Francisco.  She was probably fifteen years his junior‑‑ a beautiful young woman, lovely brown hair and eyes.  I read the report of the Coroner’s hearing, at which it was determined she died from the explosionCa chemical reaction while she was working on a new psychoactive drug.  She was working alone at the time.   I’ve never seen a man so destroyed as Salder.  I was told that he had to be restrained in the prison psychiatric ward to be kept from killing himself.”

Doyle leaned back in his chair, then bounced forward.  AOnce he left the sanatarium, he wouldn=t stay at Washington.  When I first saw him after his initial interview here, he still looked like a skeleton.  One wondered how he could continue existing.  But he went back to work, published the most important text put out by the department in the previous ten years.  This was before he even officially joined the faculty.  Did all the work on his own‑‑ do you realize what determination that involves?”

Brigham Doyle shook his head, and stared down at the pipe bowl in his hand.  “And now, tragedy repeats itself.”

Luke rose from his chair.  “I won’t keep you any longer.  Thank you very much, Dr. Doyle.”

Doyle came out of his reverie.  “I thank you for the title, but although I’ve been surrounded by PhD’s for ten years, I’ve only a lowly Bachelor’s degree and CPA to my credit.  Still, if I have to say so myself, my work here isn’t insignificant.  It’s not easy to keep the department solvent when you have fifty odd academics with their heads in the clouds.”

When Luke returned to the apartment that evening, Wolfgang barked and leaped wildly, as if he were woofing in tongues, until Luke bent to rub his sausage‑shaped body.  In turn, every inch of Luke’s exposed skin was lovingly washed by Wolfgang’s tongue.

Luke=s eye caught a new painting in the living room.  It was by Julia.

The predominant colors were red and orange and black, swathed ferociously across the canvas.  From the jumble of colors and lines, the angry head of a tiger took shape.  Its eyes were blood red.  Luke stared at the painting.  The jagged slashes at the sides of the tiger’s mouth had become the ends of a mustache.  The turbulent, stormy, savage face of the tiger became Jeremy’s.

Jeremy showed up later.  It was practically the first time he half-smiled at Luke since he returned from New York.  “Does anything look familiar?” he asked.

“Yes, you son of a bitch.”  Luke bit his lip to keep from laughing.  There was nothing funny in the furious painting, but the silent tension that had filled the apartment for the past weeks had suddenly deflated.  “She’s captured you to perfection.”

“Ahh, shit!”  Jeremy glanced at the framed painting on the wall.  With a loud “Harrumph!” he collapsed onto the couch.  “Luke, You’ve got to be a goddam fool to have put up with me.”

“You’ve got a good point there.”  Luke sat in the maple rocker.

Jeremy draped both arms on top of the pillows of the couch and gazed straight ahead.  “She had an abortion.  At seven weeks.  She didn’t ask me.  I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

Luke looked steadily at him, barely moving the rocker.

“Oh, it was mine all right,” Jeremy said.  “Seven weeks to the day from my trip to see her Greenwich Village display.”  He looked down at his hands, where one fist ground into the palm of the other.  “I would’ve wanted her to keep it.  She didn’t give me a chance.  I told her so.”

“You told her rationally, like you’re telling me now?” Luke asked quietly.

Jeremy lifted forlorn eyes to Luke.  “I called her a fucking bitch.  I called her every name in the book.  I sounded like a God‑damned right‑to‑lifer yelling at her:`Who gave you the power to destroy a life that’s half mine?  Why the hell didn’t you give me a say?'”

Jeremy stared through Luke rather than at him.  “She screamed back at me that she wouldn’t raise a kid in the havoc we created between us.  She called me a malignant bastard.  She said she wouldn’t want anyone to grow up branded with my anger.”

Jeremy stopped talking.  His breath came hard.  His face was red.

Luke rose from his chair, and took a step toward him.  “I’m sorry, Jeremy.”

Jeremy continued to stare through him.  Then, his eyes focused.  He turned away.  “Go to hell,” he said.

Chapter 11

The next morning, Luke answered his page.

“Dr. Burnam, I’m Evelyn Gerson.  Dr. Carruthers gave me your number.”

Gerson=s name instantly struck a chord.  “You’re Laura’s roommate?”

“Right.  But I haven’t seen her for a couple months.  I just got back in town and heard what happened.  Are you one of Laura’s relatives?

“Well, no I’m not.”

*     “Have you known her a long time?

“I only met her three times.  The first was by chance, two weeks ago, but I’m very interested in seeing that she gets help.”

Gerson cleared her throat.  “Whatever the relationship, Dr. Carruthers suggested that maybe I could help you.”

“Ms. Gerson, I would indeed like to talk to you.  Do you have a break tomorrow?”

“I’m between classes from 12:30 till 2:30.”

“How >bout Norm=s Deli in Westridge Village for lunch?@

“Okay, but I gotta warn you.  At least half the extra pounds I’m carrying came from Norm=s.”

“One o’clock in front?”

“How’ll I recognize you?”

“Well, I’m about six‑one, thin, light brown hair, no mustache, usually a dour expression on the face.   And I’ll be carrying my blue Cordura nylon briefcase with an “REI” logo on it.  What about you?  I don’t want someone thinking I’m making a pass.”

“I’m certainly not going to describe my figure until I lose those extra pounds.  But I’ll be wearing a white leather jacket, jeans, and will have a starved look on my face.”

He was on the wards at five.  Fortunately, his current service remained fairly light; it was the lull before the mid‑autumn infectious disease season would strike and send flocks of chronic lung patients and skid row residents to fill the empty beds.  After finishing morning rounds with his chief attending man, he hung his white lab coat in the closet of the small conference room behind the nurses station.  “Hold the fort for me, Chris,” he said to his junior resident.

“I’m running out of stories to hand Vivian each time she calls,” Chris Traverson said.  “I don’t know how many women you’re having affairs with, but you sure as hell have my admiration.”

Luke arrived in Westridge early, and by ingrained habit parked near the edge of the campus in the lot of the Neuropsychiatric Institute, part of the maze of buildings that made up the Center for Health Sciences.  For four years of medical school, these grounds had been home to him.

A cool, crisp wind from the west marked the uncertain change of seasons in Southern California.  The leaves of the coral trees bordering the NPI were brown and orange; those that had fallen made a quilted carpet on the wide cement walks and patches of grass that lined Westridge Plaza.  He left the campus and walked south on Westridge Boulevard, past the college‑town stores:  ice cream and pizza parlors, books, videos, custom T‑shirts, athletic clothing, cameras‑‑ and arrived at Norm’s Deli still fifteen minutes early.

Dangling his briefcase he waited, while the noon‑time crowds bustled around him.  A pedi‑cab wheeled by.  Two women chatted and giggled in the cart while the college‑age driver, wearing bicycle shorts beneath a tuxedo coat and tie, pedaled furiously.  A tall, black youth pranced by, his muscles rippling through a skin‑tight crew‑neck shirt, while his feet kept rhythm to a private beat from stereo earphones.  Every few steps he’d stop, twirl, and snap his fingers in the air.  A thin woman wearing loose purple sweats panted as she jogged and zig‑zagged through the sidewalk traffic.  Luke leaned back against the brick wall of the entrance to the restaurant.

His thoughts drifted back to the mountain.

He pictured her by the side of the stream, her face quiet and thoughtful as she gazed into the water.  What memories were flooding her as she sat there stirring the silt with a reed?

He’d been stunned by the abruptness of her transformation.  Once again he felt a wave of anger with himself over his crudity.  He should never have told her that he’d spoken to the police.  And he shouldn’t have tried to hold her.  He recalled how her eyes filled with panic, and her slim body arched backward as she struggled to escape.

He opened his eyes with a start.  A slightly overweight young woman dressed in a white leather jacket, jeans, and white boots stood in front of him, smiling.  ALuke?@

AYep,@ he said, trying to hide his surprise.  This somewhat flamboyantly dressed woman was not what he’d expected from Laura=s roommate.

“From your call, I expected to find someone kind of peculiar,” she said after they were seated at a table.  “And I’m still not so sure.  But I never pass up an offer of a meal.”  She was plump but attractive, rosy‑cheeked, with blond hair woven into a pony‑tail.  Her figure threatened to overflow her low cut jersey blouse and designer‑labeled jeans.  She had wide, earnest eyes; as she talked, her eyebrows lifted to emphasize points.  She looked in her mid‑twenties.

“You’re not the only one worried about how sane I am.  Let’s get a table, and I’ll tell you about it.”

They sat near the window, while Luke ran through the story of his trips up Echo Mountain, going into detail only about the first time he found Laura in the fireplace‑cave, barely touching on the later two visits.

Her brows moved up and down while she listened.  “That=s quite a story,” she said when he finished.

He unfolded the checkered cloth napkin.  “I still think there’s a chance she’d come to me.  But, I don’t believe I can do any better than I did before unless I know more about her.  I was hoping you’d be able to help me, Evelyn.”

“When my mater is mad at me she calls me Evelyn.  Otherwise, I’m Evie.”

Luke nodded.  AEvie, it is.”

They were interrupted as a throat cleared loudly beside them, and both looked up at the waiter.  He was lanky and  stoop‑shouldered, with a fringe of gray hair that formed a horseshoe around his shiny bald head.  A towel hung from his belt over a pot belly.  His eyelids drooped, his forehead crinkled, the corners of his mouth hung down‑‑ he looked as if he were going to cry.  He deposited a bowl of sliced dill pickles and pickled tomatoes between them.  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said in a mournful voice.

Evie ordered hot corned beef on rye, Luke a hamburger with fries.

“Drink?”

“Diet‑Coke,” Evie said.

“Same,” Luke said.

The waiter looked Luke up and down disapprovingly.  “You should have the calories.”

After he left, Luke sighed and sat back in his chair.  “You said you haven’t seen her for a while?”

She reached for a slice of pickle.  It gave a crisp “snap” when she bit.  “Two and a half months.  I was in the east, New Jersey, on a transfer program.”  Evie was in the Graduate School of Management at University, in her second year toward an MBA in Finance.  “I got back a few days ago, and our landlady told me Laura had been brought home by the police four days earlier.  Her co-worker, Holly Hassen, was dead.  That’s the first I learned.”

“How long have you known Laura, Evie?”

“About two years.  I took the apartment when I started my graduate program.”

“Were the two of you close?”

She considered the question.  “In a way.  Although we’re plenty different.”  She lifted and dropped her eyebrows.  “I keep a lot busier social schedule than she does.  Not that I don’t workCbut I like some fun.  Laura’s always so damned serious about her work.@

“Did she tell you much about her background?”

Evie shook her head.  “Laura doesn’t have a background.  Her history started the day she got to University.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean exactly what I said.”  She took a sip of her Coke.  “I know she came from Oregon‑‑ that’s where she got her undergraduate degree.  But she’d never talk about it.  Her past didn’t exist.  Her only interest was in her work and Salder=s project.”

The waiter reappeared.  “One hot corned beef on rye for the lady.”  He set the plate in front of Evie.  “And,” his voice grew more dejected, “a hamburger with fries for her companion.”  He loped off.

“Did Laura talk much about the mountains?” Luke asked.

Evie reached for the mustard.  “Whattaya mean?”

“Did she ever discuss any wilderness experience?  On Mount Hood?  Anywhere in the Cascades?”

“As I said, she didn’t have a past‑‑ not as far as her relationship with me was concerned.@  She slapped a mustard­­­­­­­­­­­-painted slice of rye onto the rest of the corned beef sandwich.  “But, Laura, a mountain woman?  I can more easily picture her sitting at afternoon tea service in a plush Hilton hotel.  And as to whether she ever talked about the mountains‑‑ hell, I was lucky to get her to talk about something other than Schopenhauer or Kierkegaard or Jung.  Or of course, Salder.”

“Do you know him?”

“Through Laura, sure.  Man, I’ve been talking so much I’m barely into my sandwich and you’re almost finished.”  She bit into the corned beef sandwich and tore loose a chunk of the tough delicatessen rye.  “Still has a trace of his hippie years left,@ she said through a mouthful.  “He was her faculty maven on her thesis, something to do with old psychology texts.  I can’t begin to tell you how much time Laura and Holly spent working with him.  He was even over at our place a few times.@  She wiped a napkin across her lips.  ABut no hanky-panky; it was always he and Holly at the same time.@

The waiter’s throat cleared loudly beside them.  Evie held up a finger and drained the rest of her drink.  “I’ll have coffee.”

“How about dessert?”

“Not on my diet.”

He turned to Luke.

“I=ll pass.”

The waiter walked off, injured.

Luke turned back to Evie.  “Was Laura interested in him?”

“Interested?  To her, he was Christ, Gandhi, and Moses rolled into one.  Look, don’t get me wrong.  She thought he was brilliant.  She kept handing me this crap about how fortunate she was to be able to work with him.  Who knows, maybe she was in love with him.  But I don’t think it was like, you know, a lover.  It was moreCwell, like you’d feel about a father.”

“What about her father?  Did she ever speak of him?”

“She mentioned that her mother died when she was very young.  She never spoke of her father.  Once I asked her.  She acted as though she hadn’t heard me.  She looked at me real distant, and then went back to talking about her work with Salder.”  She shrugged.  “In answer to your question, I know nothing about her father.”

The coffee arrived and she upended the sugar dispenser over her cup.  Her face grew solemn.  “Luke, can you tell me what they found?@

He blew on his coffee and took a sip.  “There was only the body of Holly Hallis.  And a single five cc. syringe next to her.  It was empty, but traces of RS41 were found on the lining.@

She stared at him.

“Did you ever see Salder use drugs?” he asked.

ANo..  But sometimes when he was at our place his moods swung so fast.  He’d be Mister Personality, all full of cheer and bubbling over with stories and brilliant insights.  The next minute he’d be lost somewhere far away.  Once, I saw tears were running down his face.  Doesn’t that sound like drugs?”

“It could be.  Do you know if she was on drugs herself?”

She gulped down the last of her sandwich.  “Laura?  No way!  She was as straight as they come.  Look, I’ve never fooled with the hard stuff but I’ve enjoyed some pot once in a while.  I could never get Laura to touch it.  That’s why it doesn’t make any sense.”

Luke laid his knife and fork on his empty plate.  “Did she talk much about Holly?”

Evie shook her head.  “Very little.  I understand they had been friends even in high school back in Oregon.@

“Do you have a picture of Laura and Holly?”

*     “There was one in the apartment but the police took it.”  She tilted her head to the side.  “Are you suggesting the person you found on the mountain isn’t Laura?”

“Not at all.  I=m certain she is.  Still, there are a few things that don’t yet fit.”

“Like what?”

“Laura thinks that it’s Laura who’s dead.  And that she killed her.”

“Does that make any sense?”

“None.  Holly has definitely been identified as the dead woman.”

She blew on her coffee, and took a sip.  “Luke, tell me what she looked like.”

He tried to picture her and became lost between images: when she laughed gleefully as he planted the bottle of wine in the creek; when her eyes were filled with terror after she told him she’d killed Laura; the haunting, misty face in his dream of the cavern.  “She’s slim, about five feet three, dark brown eyes with a thin, serious face, scratches from the brush but no distinguishing marks, brown hair down to the shoulders.”

“That could be her… What was she wearing?”

“The first time a blouse and skirt.  They were so torn and faded that I couldn’t tell what they once must have looked like.  The second time was right after she’d been down with the ranger, and she wore slacks.  Some sort of a tan cotton.  The blouse–” he rubbed his chin– “I think it was also tan, but I’m not sure.”

Evie shook her head.  “That’s not much help.”

Luke suddenly snapped his fingers.  “One thing!  A locket.  Did you ever see her wear a small gold locket?”

She smiled sadly.  “No.  I’m almost certain I never saw one.”

He let out a deep breath.

Evie sucked thoughtfully at her lip.  Her eyes stayed on him.  “Luke, was she pretty?”

That was the second time he’d been asked that question by a woman.  “Yes,” he said.

                                                                               Chapter 12

The constant juggling of hours and the strain of nights with three hours sleep took their toll.  Luke fell asleep during morning reports and Attending Rounds conferences, showed up on wrong floors at wrong times, remembered Grand Rounds an hour late on a morning he was scheduled to present two cases, and entirely forgot an afternoon EKG conference.

He had no idea what was driving him.  He was engaged to Vivian, and Laura was a stranger.  This made no sense.  His involve­ment was only as a concerned bystander, like a chance witness who’d happened to come across an accident scene.  That’s all.

Yet, she wouldn’t leave him alone.  When he was percussing a chest, studying an X‑ray, gazing at an electronic monitor, his thoughts would drift back to Echo Mountain.  He might be sitting in the crowded cafeteria surrounded by house staff chatter about bleeding drunks and cardiac catheters and hookers septic from tubal infections, when he’d suddenly realize that the voices had faded and he was again listening to the water of the creek by which they’d dined.  And sometimes, in the uncertain moments between wakefulness and sleep, he’d see her face materialize from within the juniper, with her dark, haunting eyes fixed on him.

He couldn’t continue this struggle for a day off here, an hour off there.  He needed a straight stretch of time.  Two weeks of vacation were still due from his first two years of residency, and there was no reason he couldn’t take them now.  He’d planned on saving them for January when he and Vivian had reservations at a ski chalet in Aspen.  He also had two weeks that would be due next year.  He could get the problem of Laura resolved and still get to Aspen in January.

He spoke to Bernice Platt, the bespectacled gray‑haired secretary to Dr. Alfred Fell, the Chief of Medicine.  She checked the list of residents’ assignments.  “Should be okay.  I don’t have anyone else scheduled to take off until mid‑November.  October’s a slow time for vacations.  Now, if you were asking this late for time around the holidays, you could forget it.”

It took three days to complete the complex switches of services that would free him from General Medicine for the last week of this month and his first week on GI next month.  That was the easy part.  Explaining the reason for it to Vivian was not as easy.

They sat at a table in the staff cafeteria of Kennedy Memorial Hospital in mid­afternoon.  Vivian was dressed in a crisp tan gabardine jacket, white blouse, pleated brown skirt.  The open, airy dining room shared the space between the two main towers of the hospital with a central courtyard.  Round lucite sun‑roof panels filled it with light.  The tables were made of gracefully molded plastic in blues and yellows.  The architectural influence of Ralph Dufrene was evident even here.

“I just don’t understand,” Vivian said.  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

Luke hadn’t yet touched his coffee.  “I happened to go up the mountain at a crucial moment.  I didn’t want to get involvedCbut I was there!”

Vivian dipped a tea bag rapidly in and out of her cup.  Hot water splashed over the sides into the saucer.  “All right, so you were there.  And you’ve already done more than anyone in his right mind could be expected to do.  Now it’s in the hands of the Ranger Service or the Canadian Mounties or the whatever.  For God’s sake, they’re responsible for that crazy woman, not you!”

He’d made a mistake.  He should never have approached it head on.  He could have thought of another explanation.  “Vivian, don’t you understand?  A woman may die if I don’t do something about it.  She won’t let the rangers come near her.  I’m the only one who can talk to her.”

Vivian stopped dipping the tea bag and stared down at her cup.  She swallowed, then spoke very slowly.  “Did anything sexual happen between you?”

It was all he could do to hold his voice down.  AYou know damn well that’s not it!”  He took a deep breath.  “For Christ’s sake, I just need time to help the rangers find her.”

Vivian slammed her spoon on the table.  “Time?  Two whole goddam weeks time, that’s what you’re talking about.”  Her voice rose.  Two lab techs sitting four tables away in the sparsely filled room interrupted their conversation to turn and look.  “Your whole vacation!”

He took his first sip of coffee.  It was luke‑warm, he felt like spitting it out.  “It will probably be resolved in two or three days, but it’s easier to take time off my services all in one stretch.”  He pushed the coffee away.  “Look, I’ve gotta take time to visit my folks in Houston, anyway.  I can do that during some of the days that are left over.  Then I won’t have to worry about going there in January around the time we go to Aspen.”

She stood up and leaned over the table, nodding vigorously.  “Oh, so that’s why you’re doing it!  For me‑‑ and for the sake of your parents, is that right?”  By now, every eye in the cafeteria was on them.  With a sob she dropped back into her chair.  “Luke, I don’t know what’s happening to you.  Can’t you see what you’re doing to us?  Don’t you realize you’re going to tear us apart?”

Luke had never seen Vivian cry. “Don’t put it that way. This has nothing to do with us.  I would never hurt youCyou mean too much to me.”

She wiped a finger across her eyes.  Her voice fell.  “Then, for my sake, leave her alone.  Don’t go back up.”

The muscles at the sides of his jaw tightened.  “I have to, Vivian.  I have to get her off that mountain.”

He didn’t even try to talk to his roommate.  Jeremy had been in a blue funk for three days in a row.  He spent even less time in the apartment, was still at his radioisotope lab at the medical school when Luke finally went to bed in the early morning hours.  By the time Luke got up, Jeremy would be sitting at the kitchen table smoking and drinking coffee, the ends of his mustache already pointing downward.  Neither of them spoke beyond a grunt.

The tension in the air subdued even Wolfgang.  He’d lope back and forth between them, give a depressed lick to an exposed ankle or toe, and then turn once again into a black and white blob on the living room carpet or kitchen floor.

When Luke came home Sunday morning after spending the night and morning on call, Jeremy was sitting on the living room couch with a glass of bourbon and ice cubes in his hand.  Next to him an ashtray was filled with cigarette butts.  On the TV screen, Clint Eastwood stared glinty‑eyed down a dust‑caked street.  Jeremy didn’t look up.  Luke walked into his bedroom without talking, and collapsed fully clothed on his bed.  He stared at the ceiling.

He turned his head as the door opened.  Jeremy lumbered in, sat in Luke’s desk chair.  “Let me get your advice about a case,” he said.

Luke pulled a second pillow on top of the first to prop up his head.  This question was strange.  Each of them often raided the other’s brain on particularly difficult patients, but a minute ago he couldn’t picture Jeremy even talking to him.  “Sure.”

“A woman has a spell of dizziness that immobilizes her for three hours, then gradually subsides over another forty‑eight hours.  She’s fine for a month, then develops a foot‑drop and has to wear a brace for a week.”  Jeremy’s finger traced circles on the glass surface of Luke’s desk.  “That clears up except for a slight foot‑drag when she’s tired, and she’s okay.”

“Is that it?” Luke asked.

“A few weeks later, she’s driving.  Her vision suddenly blurs.  She can barely pull over to the side of the street before she’s totally blind.  A half hour, and her vision starts to return.  She gets out of the car and makes her way to a phone booth to call for a ride cause she’s afraid to drive, and has trouble getting her quarter in the slot because she sees two slots where there’s just one.  A week later, there’s only some slight blurring, but she still sees double.  Then, suddenly she’s blind again.  This time it lasts two whole days before it starts to let up; and even then, she’s left with loss of central vision.”  He paused, and pressed his lips together.  “What do you think?”

“How old is she?” Luke said.

“Thirty‑one.”

“You’d need to do a full work‑up,” Luke said.  “MRI scan.  Evoked potentials.  Spinal fluid.  SPECT analysis.  Rule out brain tumor, aneurysm.  But what the hell, Jeremy?  You know as well as I that it’s multiple sclerosis.”

Jeremy stared at his finger.  It was still tracing circles on the desk.

Suddenly, he dropped his head into his arms‑‑ and sobbed.  His voice was muffled.  “She must have known what it was.  That’s the real reason she had the abortion.”  He lifted his head and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.  “She almost never calls, Luke.  How many times have you found a message from her on the answering machine?  Five days ago when you talked to her she was so blind that she had to get someone to dial the phone for her.  I was still mad.  I didn’t return her call for two days.  For two whole, goddam days.”

He stared at Luke.  “She’s better againCfor a while.  She’s going to marry me, Luke.  She doesn’t know it, but she’s going to marry me.”

                                                                                Chapter 13

The Coroner’s office on San Fernando Road was only ten minutes from County Hospital.  Luke signed for the Hassen file and sat with it at one end of a long bare table in an empty room.  He began reading the thick transcription report.

A court‑appointed Hearing Officer had conducted the Coroner’s Jury hearing.  The report of the first policeman to enter the psychopharmacology office began like an invoice: size of body; position of body; location of body in the room; description of the syringe and empty vial.  The mundane signs of death‑‑ absence of pulse, lack of breath, stiffness of limb.

When Luke came to the testimony of Detective Sorenson he skimmed over the repeat description of the corpse, then slowed.

SORENSON:  The woman whom the court has identified as Hollis Hassen had been dead approximately eleven to twelve hours when the coroner arrived.  There were two purses in the room.  One held credit cards and a driver’s license, all with the name of Laura Arigael.  The other was easily identified as Hassen=s, including the photo on the driver’s license.”

Next came the autopsy findings.  The deputy coroner had performed the examination in the University Hospital morgue along with an associate professor of Pathology from the medical school.  As a result, the description was more detailed than the ordinary, often perfunctory coroner’s autopsy.  Luke skimmed through the anatomical and microscopic findings to the conclusion:  “Death from cardiac and/or respiratory arrest consistent with anaphylactic shock from a drug.”

H.O.: Can you explain for the records what is meant by >anaphylactic shock=?

Coroner:  It=s a life-threatening allergic reaction in which there=s an immediate shutting down of the breathing passages with swelling of the throat and trachea.  It may be accompanied by temporary generalized swelling.

H.O.: Is it related to overdosage?

Coroner: No.  A person with an anaphylactic reaction to a drug can have a life-threatening reaction from even the tiniest dosage.

The stacatto beep of Luke’s pager broke the silence.  He shut it off, re‑set the controls, and checked his watch.  Four‑thirty.  He still had three new patients to see at the hospital.  He skimmed through the rest of the autopsy report and slowed again when he reached the deposition of Dr. Helene Treiger, the psychiatrist at University’s Neuropsychiatric Institute who’d been in charge of Laura Arigael’s case while she was there.  The deposition had been taken the afternoon before the final day of the three day hospitalization, and dealt only with Laura.  A Deputy Officer of the Court had conducted the deposition.

TREIGER:  When I first saw her, some of the effects of the drug were still evident.

D.O.: Are you speaking of RS41?

TREIGER: No, this was LSD, which is far more hallucinogenic.

D.O.:  Please explain that, Dr. Treiger.

TREIGER: Even after she was brought down by the rangers, and that was at least forty-eight hours after the death, Miss Arigael continued to show spells of delusional behavior.  She initially denied her identity, said she was Holly Hassen.

D.O.:  You were convinced that was a delusion?

TREIGER:  I was.  The next morning she clearly identified herself as Laura Arigael.  That was confirmed by many avenues of identification.  In our first therapy session she had no recall of the earlier delusional material.

D.O.:  What was her relationship to Hollis?

TREIGER:  Holly was Laura=s close friend back in Portland and her post-graduate co-worker.  The two of them had gone to high school in Portland and college in Corvallis.  They were so close in appearance, according to Laura, that people thought they were sisters.  I asked her about the name Rayana on a gold locket she wore.  At the first interview, she said it was a special nickname of Holly, who’d given the locket to her.  Later, she confirmed that it came from her own father after a Himalayan trip.

D.O.:  Again, you have no question that the young woman who was under your care was Laura Arigael?

TREIGER: None whatsoever.  Unfortunately, delusional loss of identity is a common hazard of hallucinogenic drugs.@

D.O.: How long can it last?

TREIGER: With LSD, a few hours, a day, a week, several months.  Sometimes, it can recur for the rest of the victim=s life.

Luke started as the door opened.  The desk clerk, a small wrinkled man with a thin pencil‑like mustache, entered.  “Five o’clock.  Closing time.”

Luke closed the folder and rose wearily.

”                 ”                 ”

Tuesday.  Two more days until he could leave.  He phoned the Oakwilde Ranger Station.  He’d phoned so often that the receptionist recognized his voice and called Bea to the phone without asking who he was or was calling.

“Have you seen her?” he asked Bea.

“I’ve been up every day except Saturday.  She hasn’t shown herself.”

He took a deep breath.

ADid you expect her to be waiting to greet me?@ she asked.

His silence answered.

Bea=s voice softened.  “She’s probably all right, Doc.  I got a report from a backpacker Sunday who’d given her food.”

All of his concern latched onto that one word.  “What do you mean, >probably’ all right?”

“I don’t mean anything!  It’s just that… well, it’s getting late in the season.  Not many people are going up there any more.  I’m concerned about the first weather front.”

“I know,” he said.

He dropped by Salder’s office without phoning.  Salder’s secretary paged him, and he appeared within five minutes.  He was slightly breathless, as if he’d been hurrying.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Salder said after Luke brought him up to date.  “I think I can understand the concern you feel.  It’s been haunting me.  At first, it was her confusion of identity.  Now, it’s her life itself.”

“I’m going back up in two days,” Luke said.  “I managed to get some time off service.  Any suggestions in the meanwhile?”

Salder rubbed his beard before speaking.  “You could talk to the Emergency Room doctor who first saw her when the forest rangers brought her in.  He might be able to fill in a few holes.  Providing, of course, you can find him.”

“That’s a good idea,” Luke said.

“If you can use my influence with the bureaucracy, call on me,” Salder said.  “It would make me feel better.  I already feel so damn useless.”

The University Emergency Room was at the southeast corner of the Center for Health Sciences.  Only two people occupied the modern, freshly‑scrubbed waiting room.  A middle‑aged black man, well‑dressed in gray suit and tie, studied a ragged People magazine, at times lifting his head and glancing around impatiently.  A muscular broad‑shouldered young man dozed in a rigid vinyl chair.  On his blue sweatshirt the name “HORNETS” was printed in large, gold letters.  The last time Luke had been here was six years ago, when he’d been brought in with a fever of 104 degrees.  This morning, after barely four hours sleep, he felt as washed out as he had then.

The officious woman behind the counter looked up at him over her half‑rimmed spectacles.  “If you wish to review Miss Arigael’s files, bring the properly authorized release form to the Medical Record room when it’s open tomorrow.”

“There isn’t time for that.  I need to talk to the doctor who saw her.”

She lifted her hands in exasperation.  “I can’t help you with that.”

He took in a deep breath.  It wouldn’t help to get angry.  “Would you please check the daysheet?  It was two and a half weeks ago.”

With a show of great effort she turned her chair around, then rummaged in a cabinet under the counter and came up with a three‑post binder.  She gave him a put‑upon glance and opened it.  She licked her thumb between each page.  “I suppose this is it.  October Fourth‑‑ Laura Arigael?”

He nodded.

“It’s Doctor Harry Fryman.”  She slammed the book shut with finality.  “He’s one of the residents.”

“Is he here now?”

She checked a roster on the wall.  “Fryman’s on service at Harbor General.”

Luke phoned and Fryman was on duty.  The drive on the San Diego freeway to Harbor General in moderate weekend traffic took forty‑five minutes.   Luke left his name at the desk and took a seat in the crowded waiting room.  It had scuffed, speckled synthetic floors, dingy gray plastic shell chairs, and splattered walls.  In contrast to University Hospital, which was largely private and located in the well‑to‑do western section of the city, Harbor General was a county hospital that serviced the sprawling ghettos of south Los Angeles.  Its emergency clientele was quite different.

All but three chairs were full.  Across from him an overweight elderly bronze‑skinned woman with thick swollen feet sat stolidly, her breathing moist and rapid.  To one side a young hispanic woman held an infant swathed in blankets while she scolded in rapid Spanish three children, all under age six, scrambling and crawling on the floor at her feet.  A bearded, uncombed young man, wearing a soiled, sleeveless athletic shirt beneath a black leather motorcycle jacket, sat like a caged wolf in one corner.  As if a taut spring had been suddenly released he snapped out of his chair and paced restlessly in the crowded quarters.  He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.  The woman behind the desk called out, “You!  If you want to smoke, go outside!”  He dropped the cigarette and ground it into the floor, then returned to his coiled position on the chair.

The door labeled “Authorized Personnel Only” opened, and a man in a green scrub suit looked toward him.  “Dr. Burnam?”

Luke introduced himself.  The E.R. doc was a short muscularly built man about Luke’s age, with hair cut long enough to get him on a hard-rock band.  “I’m  Harry Fryman.  I understand you’re asking about Laura Arigael.”

Luke said: “She’s in serious trouble, and I’m trying to help her.  I desperately need more information about what happened before I found her.”

Fryman looked around.  “How about talking over coffee?”

“I could use it.  But I hate to burst in on you like this‑‑ the place looks swamped.”

Fryman waved a hand casually.  “I’m in luxury today.  Four of us are on duty.  Let’s go over to the cafeteria where we won’t be interrupted every minute.”

The crowds from lunch had left, and only a few nurses and attendants in white jackets or green scrub suits sat in the nearly deserted staff cafeteria.  Fryman poured coffee from the spigot of a large metal urn into styrofoam cups and passed one to Luke.  They sat at a square, formica‑topped table.

Fryman was in his second year of residency in Emergency Medicine, a field that had acquired its own specialty status not long ago.  Luke described his experiences of the past eighteen days.  “I have to see this through,” he concluded.  “With winter coming on, I’m afraid there’s not much time.”

Fryman blew on his coffee and studied Luke before answering.  “I remember the scene; it would be hard to forget.”  He took a sip of coffee.  “She was brought in by the Forest Service rangers, and almost immediately a Detective Sorenson arrived and took over.”

“Drugs?”

“Toxicology ran a blood screen on ArigaelCit tested out LSD.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.   But she fought the nurses when they tried to put her in a gown.  I tell you, she may appear thin and fragile– but she was a tiger.  Then, suddenly she was all submission, dead‑like.”  He took a swallow of coffee.  “After they got her in an examining gown I went over her.  Bruises over both upper arms.  A large bruise on her right thigh and a few smaller ones.  The swollen axillary gland that had been incised under caveman conditions by you, I guess.  Not much else externally.”

Fryman took both cups to the urn to refill them.  “By now I knew it already had to be one hell of a legal mess, and I wanted to make sure my ass was covered.  I rousted the on‑call attending man out of bed and got him down here.  As you probably know, on all cases of a woman injured and irrational, there’s a protocol you’d better follow on possible rape or they get your balls in court.”

Luke shook his head.  “My emergency room service was at the Veterans Hospital.  We didn’t get much rape there.”

Fryman grunted.  “While we were waiting for the attending, I asked her what happened.  She just stared at meCmore through me, as if she were seeing something on the other side, maybe not even in the room.  Then she said, real quiet‑like, `She’s dead.’  That’s all she said.  I figured she was hallucinating from the drug.  Until the police filled me in, I didn=t know about the girl who died.

“She’d quit struggling by the time the Attending Physician arrived, and we put her up in stirrups.  I tell you, there were plenty of us‑‑ a couple nurses to help me, another to label the specimens and still another to check the labels to make sure they’d stand up in court.  A female cop standing by to make sure the `chain of evidence’ didn’t get broken.  And the Attending.  It was like a goddam courtroom already.”

He took another drink of coffee.  “I finally got the required specimens, three of them from the vaginal pool plus combings of pubic hair to be labeled and packaged before going to the lab.  The preliminary report came back a couple hours later: lots of red blood cells, some white cells.  No sperm.”

He stretched, and yawned.  “Sorry, I’m at the tail end of my twenty‑four hours.”  He drained his coffee.  “We couldn’t get hold of any family.  She said she had none.  The one number listed in her files was of an aunt in Oregon and apparently no one answered at that number.  We certainly couldn’t let her loose in the shape she was in, figured the least we could do was put her on a seventy‑two hour hold.  You don’t have to go through court for that‑‑ you can do it just with the psychiatrist’s assessment.  I reached the psych resident on‑call.  After he took one look at her, he called his attending.  She came over, and it was her ballgame from then on.”

“That must have been Dr. Treiger,” Luke said.

“You got it.  Helene Treiger.  Seemed like a decent shrink.”

Luke stopped by the apartment to change to hospital whites on his way back to University.  He was still rehashing Fryman’s story when he walked in the door.

A stark scene shattered his thoughts.  He stared.

Propped against the wall next to the tiger painting was a new one.  Unframed, it was thumbtacked onto a pasteboard backing.

Luke caught his breath as he approached it.  It had the unmistakable stormy chaotic lines of Julia.  From the wild, jumbled disorder, the silhouette of a tiger’s head again emerged.  Angry.  Relentless.

But the colors!  As if a light had been turned off, the colors were blotted out.  The bright crimsons and violets and golds were gone, replaced by a grim monochrome of grays.  Luke felt a dull sickness in his stomach as he stared at the tiger’s eyes.  Where they had gleamed red and fierce on the earlier painting, here they were smudged and unseeing, their centers slashed with crude, jagged strokes of black.

Beneath the canvas, on the worn seat‑cushion of the rocker, lay a note.  Luke reached for it, and recognized the broad scrawling script of Jeremy.

Luke,

I’ve left for New York.  Sorry to load you more, but before you leave, make arrangements for Wolfgang.

Tell the Chief I’ll call after I know when I’ll be back.  If he doesn’t like it, tell him I said to go fuck himself.

J

Once again Luke stared at the bleak, barren painting.  A chill spread inside him, as if a cold winter wind had begun to blow through the trailcamp.

Chapter 14

The next morning Luke tried to get away after simply leaving a note about Jeremy’s departure in the hands of the Chief’s secretary, Bernice. It didn’t work. He’d barely returned to the ward when Bernice paged him. “Dr. Fell wants to see you, now.”

When he got back to the Chief’s office, Bernice nodded dourly and motioned him in. Dr. Alfred Fell was a prominent name in renal physiology before he’d taken the post of Chief of the Department of Medicine three years earlier. He had at least two textbooks and more than a hundred scientific papers to his credit. In his late forties, he was a thin man, with colorless, almost transparent hair, a pale narrow face, and arctic eyes. Although of average height, his unwavering posture made him seem tall. Dr. Fell wasn’t known for warmth or friendliness. In fact, if a vote could have been taken, the house staff at University Hospital would have unanimously nominated him for the most disliked Chief of Medicine of any residency program in California.

Still, Luke had been on good terms with Dr. Fell. Not just Luke’s capability, but his ingrained respectful southern courtliness tended to ingratiate him with crusty tyrants high up in the medical hierarchy. At the end of Luke’s second year, Fell had taken the unusual step of telling him that if his work remained exemplary, he’d be in line for Renal fellowship next year. Renal fellowship was considered the prize of medical residency at University, and Luke looked forward to it.

Today, Dr. Fell was in no mood for pleasantries. He sat ramrod straight in his chair. “Why the hell didn’t Ross contact me himself, Burnam?”

“He felt it was an emergency, sir. He must have left right away when he learned his fiancee was going blind.”

Fell had a way of talking with the center of his mouth stiff and only the sides moving. “A doctor has obligations to see that his patients are taken care of.”

“I’m sure he realizes that.”

“I understand you moved up your own vacation time with short notice.@

“That’s vacation time left from the past two years. I’m leaving tomorrow. Winston will take over General Medicine for me and Bernstein will stay an extra week on GI until I return to it.”

“We’ll still have to do last minute shuffling to take care of the gap your roommate left in Hematology.” His mouth split out and snapped back with each word as if rubber bands connected the corners of his lips to his ears.

Luke said nothing.

“I suggest you delay your leave until Ross returns.”

“I can’t do that, Dr. Fell.”

Fell glared at him a moment longer. “Have it your way, Burnam. But I will say this: if your roommate doesn’t contact me in the next two days he’ll have to find another place to complete his training. If you hear from him, make that clear. Understand?”

                                                                         ”         ”         ”

Luke’s long-awaited appointment with the psychiatrist at University’s Neuropsychiatric Institute was for 3:00. Dr. Helene Treiger had supervised Laura=s care in the NPI for the three-day inhospital stay after Bea brought her down.

Except for lectures in medical school, Luke’s only previous contact with a psychiatrist had been when he was five. His asthma was at its worst then. He’d seen pulmonologists and allergists, but after his third hospitalization, his mother took him to Dr. Jansky who’d stopped the twitching spells of her sister, Aunt Mimi, with Miltown and something called “operant conditioning.” Luke could still picture a chubby little man with a round bald head and big lips who sat cross‑legged with him on the floor and urged him to build with a Tinker‑Toy set. Dr. Jansky had tried to convince him that the spiny glob he finally put together was a fish that was struggling to breathe out of water just as Luke was struggling for air, but Luke thought the glob looked more like Dr. Jansky than a fish.

The inner door from the waiting room opened, and Dr. Helene Treiger led Luke into her office. She was a small, gray‑haired woman of about sixty, with warm, youthful eyes. A white lab coat covered a trim navy and gray suit. Bookshelves lined two walls of her crowded office; piles of papers and journals covered her desk. Luke sat in a tan leather recliner chair positioned upright next to it.

“Of course I remember her, Dr. Burnam. She was such an appealing young woman. I was her doctor for the observation period she spent here. I’ve wondered what happened to her after she left.” Dr. Treiger paused. “I gather that everything isn’t well.”

“That’s why I’m here.” He told about their three encounters on the mountain, and what he’d learned from his interviews with the faculty. As he talked, she leaned forward on her desk, her eyes fixed attentively on him. He intended to be brief, but words poured out. “I have to do something about her,” he concluded. “I can’t just leave her up there and forget about her.”

“Forgive me if I’m prying, but do you understand the reasons for your own involvement?”

“Others have asked that same question. I’ve asked myself a hundred times, and I still don’t know. I find myself constantly thinking about her, worrying, brooding about what I should have done.”

“How can I help?”

“If I’m to have a chance of getting through to her, I need to have a better idea of why she’s reacting the way she is. I not only need to save her life, I need to understand her.” He looked down at his feet. “I know this makes no sense, but in a way, I feel that if I could understand her, I might begin to understand myself.”

She gazed silently at him for a moment, then sat back in her chair. “Ordinarily, I avoid discussing patients with others. But this isn’t an ordinary situation. I believe I can talk about Laura with you. Unfortunately, I know little enough.”

She began with their first encounter in the emergency room when the Forest Rangers brought her in.

AI read over your deposition at the coroner’s hearing,@ Luke said. AYou appeared fairly certain she was under drug effect.@

AAbsolutely.@

“Do you think she knew she was taking the drug?” Luke asked.

“The drug that most likely fit her condition was LSD, not their new research drug, RS41. There were two teacups in the room, and I understand that one showed heavy residue of LSD. Holly could have slipped it in without Laura’s knowing. I=m convinced that Laura was there with Holly before Holly died. Not only was the evidence overwhelming, but her details were too vivid to be otherwise.”

“Where does Dr. Salder fit in?”

“He often leaves them to work alone in his lab and office. He was at a meeting in Santa Barbara for the full afternoon.”  She folded her hands on the desk. “I hadn’t known Dr. Salder well. He was involved primarily in research, not clinical work‑‑ but several of his projects did bring him to the NPI where we had contact. After I saw Laura, I made an effort to learn more about him.”

She removed her glasses and studied them closely in her hands. “His early academic record was exceptional, and his bibliography filled many pages. Early on, his work was focussed on mind-altering drugs. In fact, one of his mentors during his graduate studies at Harvard was Timothy Leary.”

“From Laura’s roommate,” Luke said, “I get the impression that Laura and Salder were close.”

“So were Holly and Salder. That’s not surprising. When a postgraduate student works one‑on‑one with a faculty mentor on something as consuming as a thesis, the relationship can become very intense. I suspect that transference develops just as it does between a therapist and patient.”

Luke took a deep breath. He was sure he had rid himself of all doubt, but the damn question seemed to force itself out of nowhere. “Dr. Treiger, you’re certain that the young woman you took care of in the NPI was Laura Arigael, aren’t you?”

“I’m certain,” she said without hesitation. “You’re not the first to ask me the same question. It came up at the deposition before the Coroner’s Jury. Afterwards, the detective asked it.  I know you’re referring to her saying she was Holly. You see, Laura continued to have lapses of memory. When I first saw her she told me she was Holly Hassen, but the next morning she said she was Laura Arigael. And all of her papers identified her as Laura Arigael. I feel confident that was correct.”

Luke said: “She told me she was Holly and she’d killed Laura. When the girl she thought was Laura asked her to give her the injection, she did it.  She said Laura died instantly, in her presence.@

Treiger was silent for a moment as she studied her fingers. “When I interviewed her the day after she came into the hospital, she was no longer clouded, but appeared resigned. I fear that in my own anxiety to learn as much as I could in three short days, I committed the cardinal sin in taking a psychiatric history‑‑ I asked questions that told her what I wanted to hear. I particularly should have been more careful when she wouldn’t talk about her early background. After she told me‑‑ actually, agreed with me‑‑ that she was Laura, I found myself wondering about her hesitancy. I told myself that her behavior was simply an after‑effect of the drug.”

*#   Luke said: “I’ve pleaded with her on each occasion to come down the mountain with me. Each time, this frightened her to the point where she ran off. It’s as if she’s clinging to the mountain. She won’t even let the forest ranger see her.”

Furrows deepened in Treiger’s forehead. Her face had grown heavy, as if she’d suddenly aged. “You know, Dr. Burnam, even if she truly believed she was Holly, she would have realized I’d try to hold her here beyond seventy‑two hours unless she took the role of Laura. And of course, she was right‑‑ I would have tried to hold her, to work with her more.” She interlocked her fingers. “It had been five days since the overdose. With LSD and its relatives, selective psychotic behavior can persist in certain areas, while otherwise the victim appears perfectly normal. The .court‑mandated seventy‑two hour observation period is basically to protect the patient from self‑inflicted injury and allow us to assess the degree of psychosis. Certainly, it doesn’t permit more than a brief glimpse of psychodynamics. In my hurry, I heard what I wanted to hear.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “How I wish I could have worked with her longer.”

“Do you think you would have changed your mind?”

“As to who she is, absolutely not. I spent a number of hours for three days with herCthe evidence was conclusive, and her recall could only be that of Laura. The trouble is, I know she’s Laura, but she doesn’t. She’s changed identity with the girl she thinks she killed.”

They both sat silently. Finally, Luke rose. “I’m very grateful for your time.”

Dr. Treiger stood. “If you learn anything more I’d be very anxious for you to call me.”

“I shall,” he said.

She smiled sadly, and offered her hand. “You’re going back to find her?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you succeed.”

”         ”         ”

He had only last minute odds and ends to finish up in the hospital. He quickly summarized his cases on General Medicine with fellow resident Mark Winston, who’d agreed to leave his elective on Nuclear Medicine a week early to take over the service as long as Luke gave him back a week next April.

After he finished on the wards, Luke parked himself at a desk in Medical Records, signed reports, dictated discharge summaries. As he finally drove out the gate of the med center complex, he realized with an odd feeling that he might not be back for two whole weeks. He’d waited impatiently for this moment, and now that it was here, he had a vague sense of threat, as if he were leaving a familiar place to go to a new and uncharted area. He thought of a dream he’d once had, in which he waited an eternity in the line at the top of a ski lift‑‑ and when he finally got to the taking‑off point, he looked down and saw below him only a steep precipice with an empty void below.

He turned the key to his apartment to the accompaniment of scratches and whimpers from Wolfgang, who welcomed him explosively. Luke gave the dog a quick scratch on the neck, but his attention was again drawn to the newer painting that was propped against the wall next to the fiercely colored earlier one. The dimmed colors and smeared eyes made him more uneasy than ever.

He glanced down at Wolfgang who trotted by his feet. Wolfgang had lapsed into quietness. From the worried look on his face, it was clear that he knew something was wrong. His eyelids lifted, his forehead crinkled, and his ears dragged on the floor as they grew longer than his legs.

Luke couldn’t stand it. With the prospects of loneliness that stretched ahead for the already depressed dog, he had to do something to cheer him up. Wolfgang was crazy about popcorn. With the first sound of kernels pouring into the teflon bowl, Wolfgang perked up. Muscle tone reappeared in his ears and they lifted from the floor. The crinkles in his forehead smoothed. His tail rotated like a propellor preparing for lift-off.

As the fumes wafted through the kitchen, he went crazy, quivering with excitement, woofing and moaning, until he was reduced to lying helplessly on his back, pawing the air like an upended beetle. Luke poured the popcorn into a bowl, and Wolfgang tore into it.

While Luke searched through Kennels in the Yellow Pages, popcorn flew through the air as if a tornado had invaded the bowl. He settled for “Happy Acres” on Pine Street, because it was less than half a mile away. By the time he finished making the reservation, the last flake of popcorn had disappeared from the floor, and Wolfgang was looking up at him with a quizzical but bloated expression. What had happened to the popcorn? Why did his stomach feel so rotten?

At Happy Acres, Wolfgang forgot his stomach. While the young woman with the strong hands and braided blond hair held him, his worried expression gave way to stunned disbelief when Luke called out goodbye and hurried for the door. Wolfgang recovered in time to give a foghorn woof as Luke climbed quickly into the car.

His goodbye to Wolfgang had been a breeze compared to phoning Vivian.

In the four days since he’d told her of his plans, they’d been out to dinner once. Vivian had been unusually silent, concentrating on each forkful of food as she brought it to her mouth. Neither had mentioned the mountain. Neither had suggested that he stay over at her apartment for the night.

When he phoned, her voice was frosty. “It isn’t necessary to explain anything to me. I’m aware that you have other priorities.”

“Please, Vivian, try to understand. This has nothing to do with my feelings for you.”

Her voice rose. “It doesn’t? You put aside two weeks to go to a godforsaken place to find another woman, and that has nothing to do with me?”

He felt a wave of hopelessness. “It almost certainly won’t take two weeks. I may be back Friday or Saturday.”

“And I’ll be waiting by the phone for your call, is that it? The faithful little girlfriendCwaiting until her man has decided he’s finished with another woman.”

He shouldn’t have tried to handle it by phone. It might have worked out better face-to-face. “Vivian, don’t! You know it’s nothing like that. With winter coming, she will die if she stays up there. I have to help.”

He heard a deep breath. “Sure, Luke,” she said wearily.

“I’ll call you the minute I get back.”

“You needn’t bother to call until you are quite certain you’re through with this craziness.” The phone clicked.

He held onto the dead receiver, balancing it in his hand‑‑ then carefully replaced it on its base.

He went to the closet and pulled out his backpack. As he jammed food and emergency equipment in it, he vowed to himself that if he failed this time he would be through.

PeriodCendedCfinished.

Chapter 15

Before sunrise, Luke was heading north out of the San Fernando Valley.  The thermometer reading outside the Savings and Loan was forty‑nine; it would be down to freezing at seven thousand feet.  He caught himself driving at eighty on the nearly empty freeway and forced himself to slow.

Near Stuartville he left Interstate Five and headed into the foothills.  At 7:15 he passed the turn‑off to the Oakwilde Ranger Station.  He’d thought of stopping to check with Bea, but he was too impatient to wait until the office opened.  He continued five miles up the winding two lane highway, turned off onto the narrow ribbon of County N‑15, turned again onto a gravel road, and was at the trailhead by eight‑thirty.

The sun was out, but the first rain of the season was forecast.  His backpack bulged with food, heavy jacket, Bluett stove, aluminum pot for boiling water, ensolite pad, down sleeping bag.  He hoisted it onto his shoulders, fastened the belt strap, crossed the dry creek, and began to climb the trail.

#*   As he walked, he asked himself again and again what desperate obsession kept her from coming down from the mountain. Was Dr. Treiger right? Did she still consider herself a murderess? What twisted reasoning made her feel that she had an identity only while she was on the mountain?

His only stop was for water at Halfway Springs.  This time he didn’t have the feeling of expectancy he’d had on the last trip, only a sense of urgency.  The weather had turned.  As far as he knew, she had only a blanket to protect her from the elements.

When finally he arrived at the campsite he began to run.  He ran until he reached the cave.

It was empty.

Of course it was empty.  After the last time he was here, he should have no illusions that she’d be waiting for him.

Still, from somewhere within the ruins or surrounding forest she might be watching.  He slipped off his pack, propped it against the stone wall, and sat with his back against the side of the cave.  His best chance was to wait where he was.

He sat tensely, getting up every few minutes to pace. Once in a while, he’d call out “Laura,” and listen to its echo. Toward noon a layer of clouds moved in and covered the sun.  With them came a cool wind. Leaves of aspen and oak floated through the air and settled uneasily to the ground.  Without the sun, the stone and cement walls took on a prison gray.  Overhead, a hawk, black as its shadow, dived from the cloud cover for an out‑of‑sight prey, stopped in mid‑flight, resumed its soar.

The wind picked up.  The sky darkened.  An unseen owl, perhaps confused by  the premature darkness,  hooted.  Its call merged into the wind.

The walls and shadows of the trailcamp closed in.  By early afternoon he could wait no longer.  He slipped on his windbreaker and set out along the trail that snaked from the campground into the densely wooded backcountry.

Not far outside the campsite, he abruptly stopped.  On the trail not thirty yards ahead of him stood a coyote, a statue with glistening eyes of gray amethyst.  Soundlessly, a second coyote materialized from the forest and planted itself next to the first.  Both pairs of eyes were trained on him like shotgun barrels.  A rustle at his side caused him to spin around, and he searched the brush.  A gnawing fear struck.  The game must be scarce now that winter was approaching.  What if the pack were positioning itself, surrounding him?  He gave a brief shiver, then reassured himself. No, of course not. Coyotes don’t attack grown humans.

But, if they’re hungry enoughCwould they?

A sudden loud rustle erupted behind him, and with heart pounding he spun back.  A flight of quail took off from the brush.  He stared as they disappeared into the pines.

As silently as they’d appeared, the two coyotes that blocked the trail turned and melted back into the forest.  He walked on.

He tried to recall the landmarks where she’d left the trail and led him cross‑country to the clearing.  Several times he was convinced that an opening looked familiar but a few feet off the trail dense growth stopped him.  At a turn in the trail he came across a dwarf fir that struck a particularly strong chord in his memory.  This time he was able to penetrate deeply into the brush, twisting and shifting directions with every opening.  After zig‑zagging for a half hour he broke out onto a path.  A hundred yards down it, he stopped in dismay and stared around him.  He was at the same spot from which he’d first left the trail.

He looked anxiously at his watch; it was past 2:30.   Perhaps he could trace the stream to the clearing along the creek at which they’d eaten.  He half‑ran, half‑walked to the point where it crossed the trail, and began to scramble up it.  The going became treacherous.  After a distance, rockslides and steep cascades blocked his path.  He tried to climb around them but his lug‑soled boots slipped futilely on the water‑slick rocks.  When he moved a few feet away from the unscalable rockfalls, walls of prickly thistle, manzanita, and mountain mahogany tore his clothes, scratched at his hands and face.

He had no concept of how far he’d gone when he stumbled into a clearing through which the stream flowed level.  It looked almost familiar; but there was no trace of her‑‑ of her clothes or her food.  He set his lips.  Why hadn’t he paid more attention to the setting in which they’d eaten and talked?  He got onto his knees and studied the soft streamside soil, and thought he saw the imprint of toes.  Or was it simply the cloved hoof‑print of a deer?

He looked again at his watch.  It was idiotic of him to even think he might find her in this expanse of wilderness.  He might as well head back for the trailcamp and wait there in the hope that she’d find him.  What if she did?  After what happened the last time, would she be willing to come to him?

He started back.

The going was even rougher.  Soon, he became entangled in impenetrable brush.  He back‑tracked and found another opening.  He followed it, turning and shifting directions again at each blind end.  The sun became lost behind the walls of forest, and any idea of direction he once had was gone.  He felt for his belt where he usually carried his compass.  Shit!  He’d left it in his pack.

A sudden qualm of fear struck him as he realized that he didn’t know how to get back.

He checked his watch.  4:30.  He still had an hour and a half of daylight.  If he was careful that would be enough.  He wasn’t that far into the backcountry, but he no longer had the luxury of allowing time for another mistake.  He’d limit his direction to downhill in order to prevent again going in a circle.

He’d just fought his way through half a mile of thick growth when he came to an unobstructed slope.  He breathed a sigh of relief.  At the bottom he saw a clearing, perhaps a trail.

He started down the slope, digging his lugged heels into the soil with each step. The wall was softer and more crumbly than it had appeared. The slope grew steeper. His body tilted farther and farther backwards as he struggled to maintain balance.

He started sliding.  His arms swung wildly in the air.  There was nothing to reach for. He slid faster and faster until he reached the bottom in a cloud of dust and powdered clay.

He swiped at his face and looked around.  Towering banks of brush, rock, and soil surrounded him.  He prowled through the trees and bushes to find the trail he thought he’d seen.  There was no trail, only a short stretch of bare ground.

He was in a box canyon, blocked on three sides by sheer walls.  The only way out was the way he’d come.

He turned and began to retrace his steps, but near the bottom the slope was slick with moss and pine needles, and every foot of forward progress was lost in backslide.  Time after time he managed to struggle a few feet up, clawing futilely at the crumbly dirt before he slid back down to the canyon floor.

He leaned exhausted against a sheer rock wall and gasped for breath.  A glance at his watch made him grit his teeth.  With a feeling of urgency he stumbled again through the small pit‑like canyon that had become his prison.

Time was running out.  He’d have to climb one of the other banks of the canyon. At least, some of them had outjutting rocks and shrubs.

His eyes searched the boulder‑specked walls.  One part looked as bad as another.  He blindly chose a section and began to climb.

Once he struggled above the floor of the canyon, the wall was even steeper than it had looked from below.  He found toeholds on jutting rocks and handholds on shrubs anchored in the dry clay‑like soil.  Inch by inch he pulled himself up, his fingers raw and bleeding as they dug into scraggly roots and sharp splinter‑like stones.  He was about twenty feet up, the top still not in sight, when he felt an ominous sensation. A rock gave way as his foothold was lost.  He clutched frantically for a hold on a rock overhead, and it tore loose.  Now, nothing held.  He tumbled and sprawled face down in a roiling slide of soil, rocks, and uprooted shrubs until he landed with a crunch on the floor of the pit.

He clawed his way from the debris of dirt and stone and sat once more in the open, spitting dirt, his breath coming in sharp hard gasps.

He tried to stand, but fell back to the ground with a searing stab of pain in his left ankle. His spirits plummeted further. If he’d broken the ankle, he’d never get out.  His grimy hands were slippery with sweat as he loosened his boot.  He felt his ankle and grimaced when his fingers struck a point of exquisite tenderness just below the bony prominence.  He winced as he tested his ankle, gingerly turning his foot from side to side.  There was a slight grating sensation with each movement.  He stood up once more.  Weight‑bearing again produced a stab of pain that made him catch his breath and grab at the side of the cliff for support.

He lowered himself to the ground and sat desolately, resting his back against the wall of tumbled earth and rock while he waited for the pain to ease.  He checked his watch; it was past five.  What a fool he was.  He’d left food, water, and his heavy jacket in his pack at the  trailcamp.  Unprotected, with evening temperatures dropping into the low thirties and a rain‑front coming, he might not survive a night trapped here.  He thought of her.  Wouldn’t it be ironic if in his search for her it was he who lost his life?

A high‑pitched whine appeared in the distance, growing louder, deeper, turning into a roar of jets.  He peered into the sky, the muscles of his jaw moving up and down.  An airliner flew overhead, lone and majestic, two jet trails slicing through the rectangle of gray sky above his pit.  He stared, his tongue running over his lips.  If only he could shout loud enough they could hear him.

The plane disappeared, and its roar of its engines dwindled like a dying heartbeat.

He brushed his arm across his face, smearing the dirt and sweat.  Could she be following him, watching over him even here?  What if she really were nearby?  He called out her name. After the echo died, he shouted it again.

He collapsed back against the canyon wall, and breathed deeply.  From the near distance came the high‑pitched yapping howl of coyotes.  He felt a chill as he thought of the silent specters that had blocked the trail earlier.  Regrouped into their pack under cover of night, would they be as cautious?  A raven flew over, its black serrated wings outstretched in the wind.  From its beak dangled a strand of meat plucked from the carcass of an animal who’d lost its own struggle.  It circled over him, studied him, inspected him, while its wings slowly flapped up and down‑‑ until finally it disappeared over the treetops.

He thought of his call to Vivian the night before.  He’d assured her that he’d probably be back in a couple of days.  What would she imagine as the days passed and she didn’t hear from him?  How long would it be before her anger– and her hurt– changed to concern?  Would she think to call the Forest Service?  Not only Vivian, but others knew of his trip: Salder, Treiger, Carruthers.

But how would they finally find him?  When the first snows struck, this box canyon would be totally covered.  His body might not be found until the spring thaws.  If ever.

He gazed hopelessly around.  The quiet of the forest was the silence of the tomb.  The only sound was his own breathing.  His limbs grew heavy as lethargy drifted over him.   It would be so easy to lie back and give in to the stillness.

No.  Not now.

He shook his head and stiffly, painfully stood up, groaning as he leaned for support against the sheer canyon wall.

Once more he surveyed his prison.  Where he tested the wall on which he’d taken his fall, every touch caused a fresh slide of loose soil and rocks.  He dragged his way back to the steep, slippery, moss‑covered slope on which he’d slid into the box canyon.  Not a rock or shrub even suggested a foothold.  Again, the feeling of desperation rose in his throat.

Get yourself together‑‑ this is no time to panic.  He looked again at his watch.  At best, an hour of daylight left.  Concentrate on one step at a time.

Again, he studied the sheer walls, hobbling between rocks and clumps of brush.  His eyes fixed on a scraggly scrub oak to one side of the fresh slide.  Its roots were still anchored.   Grimacing with pain, he limped over to it, stretched as tall as he could, and tugged on an overhanging branch.  It held.  He tugged with both hands.  Still holding. He had a slight rebirth of hope. Hopping on one foot, he backed off and stared at the wall above it.  It towered steeply, even higher than the slope he’d slid down, but a few more roots protruded, and there were patches of chaparral. He looked around. Nowhere else looked as promising.

This had to be the last try.  He grabbed hard on the branch and let his full weight hang on it, holding his breath, waiting for the terrible, rending sound of the crumble and the fall.  His good foot, digging against the steep wall for a foothold, scooped out shallow pockets of loose earth.  His his injured foot caught in a protruding root, and he grimaced to support his weight.  Grunting, choking on the cloud of fine dirt he’d raised, he reached for a higher shrub and pulled himself another foot farther up.  The pain in his left foot was shearing, but everything held.  He spat dirt and blinked his eyes hard to clear them of the dust.  Okay.  One more foot.

Above, the chaparral grew thicker.  Crumbling soil filled his eyes and prickly branches tore his hands and scratched his face, but the brush continued to hold.   Panting and coughing in the dust, he pulled himself farther to where his good foot found anchor on jutting granite.  He reached up and found another root, lifted himself once more until the toe of his boot found still another anchor.  Sweat, dirt, and blood ran down his face.  He reached again.  Branch by branch, toehold by toehold, with his body flattened against the rocky soil he clawed his way.  He inched over a jagged boulder that cut at his chest and waist.  He pulled himself higher.  His bad foot found a rest on the boulder.  He ignored the pain and reached for another jutting root.

He recognized the sickening feeling as the boulder beneath his foot moved.  He clutched the root.

As the boulder gave way, suddenly his full weight hung from his hand.

He heard an ominous cracking.  The root couldn’t hold.  As if a giant charge had been detonated within the depths of the cliff, the entire mountain wall broke loose.  The crumbling earth above rumbled like a freight train bearing down on him.  He seemed to be viewing everything in slow motion as the mountainside spewed out and floated above him, around him, onto him.  A large jagged rock headed slowly toward him like a fluttering feather.  It struck his forehead before floating past.  As he fell, his body twisted helplessly in mid‑airCstill in slow­motion, then faster, faster. He plunged head first, scraping and bouncing and sliding in a thundering avalanche of soil and rock.

Before the blackness descended entirely, he thought he heard her scream. “Luke!”

Chapter 16 

Choking and coughing, Luke fought to breathe through air passages tight with asthma.  He coughed. His face covered only by a thin layer of soil, the sand sputtered from his mouth. He finally took in a deep gasping breath.  He coughed harder, spewing out sand and dirt, and opened his eyes. His lids felt like grating sandpaper.  He tried to lift a hand to rub it away, but both arms were pinned down.

“You’re breathing!” she cried.  When he could see through blurred eyes, it wasn’t his mother’s face in front of him, but hers, covered with dirt, dark eyes glistening with tears.  And his arms and body weren’t held down by the Children’s Hospital nurses as in that primeval past, but by the avalanche of soil and rocks that she was frantically tearing away.

Suddenly his arms were free, and he could lift them and breathe with hungry gasps.  Sobbing, she held him.  “I was afraid you were dead!”

His breathing grew less labored, and he let himself drift in her arms as he’d once drifted in dreams when he knew they were about to end and wanted to hang on until the last moment.  Then, the pain exploded in his forehead and ankle like bursts of flame.  He rested his head against her breast until the fierce blast of pain began to ease.

When finally his eyes cleared, he was struck with fresh alarm‑‑ the side of her face was covered with blood.  He searched for its source but saw no fresh cuts.  Then he became aware that blood was running down his neck and onto his torn shirt, and realized the blood on her was coming from him‑‑ from his forehead.

She saw it, too.  She brushed the dirt from over his eyes and ripped off a piece of the sleeve of her blouse to press where it bled.  The river of blood stopped.  “Hold it here,” she said breathlessly.  She lifted his hand to the wound, then crawled backward and scooped away the soil and rocks that pinned down his thighs and feet.  When they were free, she collapsed against him and lay still, taking in long deep breaths.

If he could say her name he’d know she was real.  ALaura.”

He felt her face move against his shoulder.

“I heard you call out before I went black,” he said.

Her voice caught.  “I was afraid I was too late.”

He lay back and closed his eyes.

She stirred, and suddenly sat up.  “We’ve got to get out.  It’s almost dark.”

He’d forgotten where they were.  He reached up and touched the jagged gash on his forehead.  No fresh blood showed.  He struggled to a sitting position.

The shadows had already disappeared from the sheer canyon walls and the last light of day was fading.  Overhead, the wind had picked up.  The air within the pit‑like canyon had grown moist and cold.

“Can you stand?” she asked.

“I think so.  But I couldn’t find a way out.”

“I know how.”  She took his hand, and helped him struggle to his feet.  But when he rested his weight on his left foot, the pain again exploded and the blackness started to return.  He would have fallen, but she held onto him tightly.

Slowly, she lowered herself to her knees, supporting his weight until he was back in a sitting position.  “You’re hurt more than I realized,” she said in a hushed voice. Still on her knees, she checked his ankle.  He winced at the pressure of her fingers above his boot.  “Ohhh,” she said, and looked back up at him.

“I’d better not take the boot off. The ankle might swell too much to get it back on.”

Her eyes were dry now, and her face sober.  “The sun’s almost down.  We’ll wait until tomorrow’s light to get out.”  She wiped her hair back from her forehead as she looked around.  He noticed that her denim skirt was already torn in many places from the prickly brush.  Below, her bare legs were scratched, her sneakers frayed and tattered.  “It’s going to rain,” she said.  “There’s an overhang about five yards away.  Can you make it?”

“Sure.”

“Over here,” she said.

He painfully turned over and crawled underneath a granite overhang half‑hidden by a scraggly growth of fir.  With her arm around his shoulders, he leaned back against its wall.

She rose to her feet.  “We’ll need cover.  Wait for me.”

“It’s getting dark,” he said.  “I’ll be okay here.  Find a safe place for yourself.”

“I’ll be back.”  Suddenly she was gone.

He lay propped against the stone wall as twilight faded into darkness.  Once he was still, he began to shiver in the freezing night air.  By now the entire right side of his head throbbed, each heartbeat striking like a hammer‑blow.  He tried turning his foot and the pain shot through him.

Far in the distance, he heard the first rumble of thunder, and minutes later heard drops of rain.  He pressed his lips tightly together.  His sleeping bag and jacket were three to four miles away at the fireplace‑cave.  Darkness was descending like a curtain.  Wherever she went, she could get killed trying to find her way in the dark.

Shivering, aching, head throbbing, he stared out into the moonless night.  Experienced as she was, it would be impossible for her to find her way back here now. He prayed she had a shelter she could use. He pulled his thin windbreaker higher around his neck. How many hours could he survive hypothermia through a wet and freezing night?

Suddenly he heard a rustle through the brush, and she was kneeling beside him.  She carried a blanket and a sweater.  Her warm breath struck his cheek.

“You shouldn’t have risked coming back!” he cried out.

She slipped an arm behind his head.  “Lie down.”

With both hands on the ground, he pushed himself away from the cliff wall he’d leaned on.  She bent over him and supported his head with her arm until he lay flat.  Then she bundled her sweater into a pad and slipped it beneath his head.

She covered him with the blanket. It was loden green and labeled Forest Service, which meant it was something Bea had left behind for her.Again, Laura  disappeared.Within seconds she returned with an arm full of leaves, twigs, and pine cones, and spread them over the blanket.  Three more trips.  The layers grew.

All at once, she was under the blanket.   Her arm reached over his chest.  Her body pressed tightly against him.  Her face nestled against his cheek.  He felt her warmth melt into him through the thin layers of clothes.  It was a wonderful feeling that almost broke through the pain in his leg.

The rain struck in earnest, hitting the leaf‑bed outside their shelter like bullets from an automatic weapon. The wind whipped its spray into the shallow cave.  He barely noticed it.  He wrapped his arms around her and held her to him.  The thunder grew closer.  She buried his face in his hair, and he clutched her more tightly.

He awakened to the first light of morning.  Her hair was soft velvet against his lips.  Her body was still pressed so firmly against his that he could feel their bodies’ heat mingling. The icy mountain cold barely penetrated.

The rain had stopped.  Outside the shelter, a thin layer of snow covered the shrubs and ground.  Not a trace of breeze broke the morning stillness.

He tried not to move, not to awaken her, but her eyes were already open.  She pulled her head back and smiled at him.  It was the loveliest smile he’d ever seen.  “We’ll get up when the sun’s out,” she said.

She again rested her face against his cheek and closed her eyes.  He drifted back into the dream.

When he opened his eyes, she wasn’t there.

Outside the shelter of the overhang, the snow had melted, and the sun angled in with bright warming rays.  The fear that she’d disappeared struck like a sudden blast of cold wind.  He struggled to sit up.

As if she’d materialized from air, suddenly she was kneeling beside him.

He gasped.  “I was afraid I’d only dreamed you were here.”

She smiled gently.  “I was never far.”

He collapsed back to the ground.  He wanted her to lie down beside him again.  He wanted to feel her face once more against his cheek.  “I was afraid of losing you again.”

She touched her hand gently to his swollen forehead.  It felt cool and soothing.

“I wouldn’t be alive now if you hadn’t found me,” he said.

“I saw you back in the trailcamp,” she said.  “I wanted to come to you but…” she bit her lip… “I was afraid that others would be coming.  The ranger would have tried to bring me down.”

She gazed at him with her hand resting on his forehead, then lowered her head until it rested against his shoulder.  She continued. “I ran away.  It was only a short time.  When I finally got the courage to go back, you were gone.”  Her head moved slightly against his arm.  “At first I thought you’d gone back down the trail, but then I saw your sleeping bag was still there. I was able to follow your tracks for a while. Then I lost them by the rockfall.”

Her voice grew quieter as she continued.  “I was frightened.  I couldn’t find you anywhere.  Finally I heard you– far in the distance.  I was afraid I was too late.”

He crooked his arm so that he could touch her hair.  His hand slowly stroked it.

She turned her head so that it rubbed against him.  He thought he felt her lips brush against his shoulder.  He wanted to turn and take her fully in his arms and feel her body against his like when he’d first awakened.

She stood. “We’d better get started.@

“All right,” he said.

He climbed to his knees. At once he was again aware of the white hot anvil in his forehead and the throbbing pain in his ankle.

She crouched down and reached her arms around him.  “Hold your arm on my shoulders.” He did. “Now,” she said.

He shifted all his weight to his right ankle and pushed.  Her arms tightened.  In one sudden motion, she stood up, lifting him with her.

Once he was standing, she kept one arm beneath his to support him.  His limbs were brittle glass.  When he put weight on his left ankle the pain shot through him as if an electric charge had shorted. Cold sweat dripped from his face.  Awed by the strength of her slender body, he leaned on her and took a step forward.  Then another.

She watched him, her face etched with lines of concern.  “We’ll have to climb out.  Can you give it a try?”

“I’m okay,” he said.

With him leaning on her shoulder she moved ahead.  A few yards past the edge of the overhang they’d slept under, she held aside branches of an elderberry and helped him through.

It was hopeless.  The canyon wall was just as steep as before.

She answered his unspoken question.  “I got out this way yesterday.  The bank will hold.”

She started up.  The sheer rise of the canyon wall was broken by roots, branches of shrubs, and rock outcroppings.  Using them for support and leverage, she climbed until her feet were above his eye level before stopping.  “See if you can pull yourself up until your foot can fit on this rock.”  She gestured toward it with one foot.

He took hold of the root she’d used and tugged with all his strength.  It held.  He lifted himself upward.  Each bit of pressure on his left foot sent fresh waves of fire through his ankle.  He was gasping for breath by the time his right foot found the rock she’d pointed to.  He grabbed the branch of a shrub above.

Straight up the canyon wall he followed her, inch by inch, foothold by foothold.  Another rock… another… then, once again, the sickening sensation as that rock began to move.

“Grab the root!” she cried, pointing with a toe toward a rope‑like pine root she’d just left. “Pull yourself up with it.”

He grabbed the root just as the rock beneath his foot gave way. He tugged, feeling as if his arm would split off, until his foot found another rockhold. The pain in his ankle and his forehead had become a part of him.

He quit trying to estimate how much higher they had to go. There were only the rocks, the projecting roots, her voice: “You’re fine… a little farther… pull… we’re almost there… another step… one more pull…”

Her hand tightened on his arm.  “Okay, push hard now!”  He felt a sharp tug.  He gave one more push with his right foot and suddenly he was sprawled on level ground.

He gasped for air.  “I didn’t… I didn’t think we could do it.”

She too was breathing hard.  “We’ve still got a ways to go.  Do you want to rest first?”

“I can go on.”

With her support, he struggled to his feet.  When he first stepped forward with his left foot, his leg buckled and he held tighter to her shoulder.  She held, and he regained his balance.  He took another step.

With his arm around her shoulders, slowly, haltingly, they hobbled through the forest.

He was covered with sweat in spite of the cool crisp air.  Often, she stopped.  It was as if she could tell when the pain grew too great and the blackness threatened to swamp him. She’d pause, and he’d again rest his weight on her until the pain eased. “Okay, let’s try again.” And they’d start out once more.

After an eternity, he bent to pass beneath a low‑lying branch of a ponderosa pine‑‑ and suddenly they were on the trail.

At that moment, it looked like a highway. She turned, and her dark eyes studied him.  “Do you want to lie down now?”

He shook his head.  He had no idea how far it was to the trailcamp. As long as she was there, as long as he could lean on her shoulders, he could keep going.

Haltingly they made their way down the trail.  In the warming rays of the noonday sun, misty swirls of vapor rose from puddles left from last night’s rain.  His ankle had swollen so tightly in his boot that he wondered if his circulation could get through.  His head throbbed harder.  When he touched the gash on his forehead, his fingers came away with a sticky wetness.  The tissues around it felt swollen and fiery.

Where the creek crossed the trail, she stopped.  “We’ll rest now.”

She too was covered with sweat.  She bent over the creek and drank from her cupped hands, then dipped her face into the cold clear water.  She lifted herself back onto her knees and shook her head.  Fine droplets sprayed from her hair.

“Bend closer.”  She beckoned him down toward the running water, and frowned as she studied the gash above his right eye.  “Close your eyes tight.”  With one hand she held back his hair while she carefully sponged water over his forehead.

He opened his eyes to her warm, reassuring smile.  He was so tired he could have rested his head against her shoulder and slept.  He wanted to tell her how wonderful she was, and how she’d saved his life, but he found no words. It was as if he were mute.

“It’s about a mile.  Can you go on?” she asked softly.

He nodded.

Using her again as his crutch he hobbled down the trail.

The shadows of the trees grew longer.  Time passed without meaning.  He’d been walking with her beneath his arm forever, when suddenly the pillars and walls of the trailcamp of Moorfield Lodge appeared ahead of them.

At first it didn’t sink in.  It was as if he’d been crossing an endless desert and had come across another mirage.  Then, he heard her give a deep breath, and for a moment her body seemed to sag.

She straightened.  “We’re there,” she said.

Slowly, they made their way through the ruins, past the stone sentries, past the gnarled juniper, to the fireplace cave where his backpack and sleeping bag waited.

His last trace of strength deserted him.  His legs melted and his arm grew limp.  He would have dropped if her arm hadn’t circled his waist.  Carefully, she lowered him to the floor of the cave.  She sat cross‑legged, and rested his head in her lap.  Her fingers softly smoothed his hair back from the gash in his forehead.

He slept.

He awakened to the sound of distant hoofbeats.  His head was resting on his folded jacket and his open sleeping bag covered him like a blanket.  The sun was still bright in the west.  He rubbed his right eye, and winced as he touched the hot swollen gash above it.

*     Suddenly, he rememberedCand the memory flooded over him like an ocean wave.  He sat up with a start, and stared around.  Not a sign of her. Had she gone for help? No, she would have told him. She heard the hoofbeats. Bea probably came every morning, and Laura knew it. He climbed to his feet, holding for support onto the stone fireplace wall, gritting his teeth with the pain in his ankle.  But that pain was drowned in his fear.  “Laura!” he cried out.  He limped farther out, and supported himself on a branch of the juniper.  “Where are you?” he bellowed.

The hoofbeats grew louder.  From the mouth of the trail a silver‑maned black horse appeared.  On it rode Bea.

Her eyes widened.  “For Christ’s sake, what happened?”

He took a step toward her and almost fell.  He grabbed again at a branch of the juniper.  “Where is she?” he cried.

She sprang from her horse, hurriedly tethered it to a tree, and ran to him.  She reached to touch his forehead.  “Doc, what’s happened to you?”

He jerked his head back.  “She was with me!”  He spun around and gestured toward the cave.  “She was right here!”  Again he called out.  “Laura!”

He thought he saw a rustle in the brush on the far side of the campsite.

Bea continued staring at him.

The rustle didn’t reappear. He pointed to where it was. “She heard you coming. That’s why she ran off!  I saw movement in the brush over there.”

Bea looked, and shook her head.  “Probably only the wind, but if she’s determined to get away, I couldn’t find her in a hundred years. C’mon, Doc, hold your arm around my shoulder.”  She guided his hand.  “There.  We’re going over to that log where you can sit.”

He stared around as he hobbled alongside her.  She lowered him onto the the log and bent over him.

Her fingers probed his forehead and her frown deepened.  She touched the back of her hand against his cheek.  “You’re running a fever, Doc.”

“Don’t you understand? I had her with me!”

She dropped to her knee, and raised his trouser leg to look at his ankle.  “Christ!”  She looked back up at him in disbelief.  “I’m getting you to a hospital.”

“No!  I’ve got to find her!”

“Look, it’ll be hell getting through the washed‑out section with you in the shape you’re in.  We’ve got to do it while there’s still light.  Are you coming with me on your own, or do I have to use force?”

He stared at her wildly.

She muttered under her breath and shoved her shoulder beneath his arm.  With a grunt she pushed up and lifted him to his feet.  “Come on.  Over to the horse.”

“I can’t leave now!  It’ll be freezing again tonight.”

“Look, she’s proven she’s experienced. She’ll make it through the night just fine.”

“But even the best mountaineers can’t survive by themselves through a storm at 7000 feet. We’ve gotta get her down.”

Bea sighed.  “I’ll come back up and hunt for her tomorrow morning.  Right now, I’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

Looking back every few steps, he hobbled along with his hand on her shoulder.  When they reached her horse he turned around and scanned the campsite.  “Laura!” he called out. Bea shook her head and placed his good foot in the stirrup.  He looked at her frantically.  “She’s still not faraway.  She knew you were coming. Once she heard hoofbeats and knew I was safe, she ran off.”

“If she doesn’t want me to find her, I couldn’t in a hundred years. Doc, we’re running out of time.  Swing your leg over.”  She grabbed him by the butt and heaved him onto the horse.

She wiped her forehead.  “Can you hold on?”