“I’ve got a Snickers bar and a bottle of water,” said Art. “If I can just pull off that loaves-and-fishes trick I read about in the Bible, we’ll have bushels of leftovers. Oh, this might help — the map Methuselah the Caver faxed me.”
“What good’s that gonna do? We already found the cave. Unfortunately.”
“It’s not a map to the cave, Smarty Pants, it’s a map of the cave. The interior. The part where we happen to be trapped like rats. Or bats.”
“But we’re sandwiched between two cave-ins, with nothing in the middle but fifty yards of tunnel and that damn grotto.” Art studied the map silently. “Face it, Art,” I said. “We’re sealed up in here. No way out.”
Art aimed his headlamp straight into my eyes, blinding me. “You’re just gonna give up?” he said. “Me, I’m not ready to throw in the towel.” With that, he spun and began picking his way back through the debris, back toward the grotto.
“Art, wait. Slow down.”
“You hurry up.” He kept moving, his lights sweeping every square foot of the tunnel’s walls and ceiling. But his pace slackened slightly.
I caught up with him in the grotto, just in time to see the beam of his light point upward at the grotto’s ceiling and disappear into a circular opening about the diameter of a beach ball. “Aha!” he said.
“Did you know that was there?”
“Not until I checked the map. Back there when you were busy kissing our asses good-bye.”
“Sorry. Does it go out?”
“Don’t know.”
“What’s the map say?”
“Says ‘Unexplored.’ Guy who made the map used to be pretty hefty. I’m guessing the word ‘Unexplored’ shows up on most of his maps.”
“So maybe it leads to another entrance — but maybe it just meanders around inside the mountain for a while and then peters out?”
“Maybe. Do I need to get all hardass with you again, or are you feeling optimistic and exploratory?”
“Let’s go.”
That proved easier said than done. The opening was about ten feet overhead. Even if I stood on Art’s shoulders, I doubted I could reach it. I was about to suggest we start hauling in rocks from the tunnel — we certainly had enough debris to build a big pile — when Art clambered up onto the stone shelf and began studying the wall above, playing his light across the surface from various angles. “Hand me that case, will you, Bill?”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “You found some evidence up there?”
“No, genius. I need something to stand on.”
I handed it up, and he stood the rectangular case — a glorified tackle box, basically — up on end. Reaching slightly up and to one side, he grabbed a small knob of rock with his left hand. With his right, he stretched straight up and jammed two fingers into a narrow vertical crack in the wall. With a grunt, he levered himself up off the box, the toes of his hiking boots somehow latching onto projections I hadn’t even seen. Once he had both feet up off the evidence kit, he extricated his fingers from the crack, reached a foot higher, and inserted his entire right hand into the crack. As first one foot, then the other, sought purchase on the wall, I saw him strain. His left hand lost its grip and he slipped, smacking against wall and dangling by his right hand, still wedged tightly in the crack. He cried out in pain, and his feet frantically scrambled against the rock. Instinctively I climbed onto the stone bench, took his boots in my hands, and hoisted upward with all my strength. With agonizing slowness, his boots reached the level of my chest, then my shoulders; finally, I found myself standing with my arms fully extended, quaking with the effort. Just as I was about to gasp out a warning about my strength failing, I felt the load lighten, and then he was gone, his legs disappearing up through the opening in the roof of the grotto.
I kept expecting him to reappear, and when he didn’t after a few moments, I felt the panic returning. Finally, his head popped back into view. “Damn, that was tough. Thanks for the help. I thought for a minute there I was gonna leave that hand behind.”
I was still panting, partly from exertion, partly from fear. “No problem. Anything encouraging up there?”
“Come see for yourself.”
I considered the rock wall facing me. “Hell, Art, I can’t climb this. I can’t believe you could.”
“My wife gave me some visits to a climbing gym last Christmas. I think she was hoping I’d get hooked on climbing and fall off a cliff somewhere.”
“Well, unless there’s a ladder up there you can send down — or unless you want to trade places and push me up — you might have to go on without me after all.”
“And break up this winning team? No way. How big’s your waist?”
“Thirty-four. No, more like thirty-six these days. What’s that—” A glimmer of understanding began to dawn on me. “How ’bout yours, Slim?”
“None of your business. But throw me your belt and we’ll see if we’re fat enough.” I took off my leather belt, refastened the buckle to make a hoop, and tossed it upward. Art snagged it, then disappeared. When he reappeared, he had fastened the tapered end of my belt into the buckle of his own. As he lowered one end of the linked belts, I saw that they added up to a good six feet long. “Let’s hope that buckle holds,” he said. “The rivet looks pretty stout, but then again, so do you.”
Art sat on the lip of the circular opening, bracing his feet on the opposite edge. Wrapping a loop of leather around one wrist, he gripped the strap with both hands. “Try to feel for footholds,” he said. “I’m not sure I can deadlift you all the way up.” I nodded, climbing onto the evidence kit. Standing on tiptoe, I could reach just enough of the strap to take a turn around one wrist, as Art had done. He nodded. “Ready?”
“Ready. No, wait. Shouldn’t we bring the evidence kit?”
He considered this. “We’ve got bigger problems now than evidence gathering. Besides, I don’t think we can — you’re gonna need both hands to get up.”
“Yeah, but we might need to stand on it again. Lucky you’re trapped with a Ph.D.” Stepping down off the case, I bent down and unlaced both of my hiking boots. Splicing the two laces together gave me a piece of cord nearly ten feet long. I knotted one end to the case’s handle and hitched the other to one ankle. Then I climbed back up, put my flashlight in my pocket, and took hold of the dangling belt again. “Heave-ho,” I said, and he did.
Much grunting and scrambling later, I felt one of Art’s hands grasp first one wrist, then the other. He hauled me through the opening and landed me like some giant fish, thrashing and gasping. I undid the loop of belt from my now-purplish hand, fished out my light, and set it beside me, pointing upward. As I reeled in the evidence kit, I surveyed my new surroundings. We were in a disappointingly small chamber, narrow and low-ceilinged. I looked at Art. “You sure this is progress?”
He was wearing his poker face, but I thought I saw a trace of a smile at the edges of his mouth. “Let’s take a look around, see what we see.”
It didn’t take long to spot what he was smiling about. “Okay, I see footprints going around that bend in the wall. But do they go anywhere besides a dead end?”
“What do you think? Study the tracks, Sherlock.”
I did. “Okay, I see prints going in both directions. But the last ones are leading away from here.”
“Which means…?”
“This must go somewhere.”
“Bingo. Unless, of course, we find Injun Joe’s shriveled corpse wedged in a cul-de-sac up ahead.”
“Or Lester Ballard’s lying in wait to have his way with us.”
“Lester? I thought Lester only had a thing for the female body.”
“These days,” I said, “you never know. Forensics makes for strange bedfellows.”