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"Explain it, then," a forward voice growled.
"We're gettin' killed and hurt. We're takin' a beating. That's all I know."
"Karma."
Suddenly a terrible, echoing shriek cut into the music and speculation and
silenced them.
"No," breathed John. He'd never heard such pain.
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light
"Bullseye," said Pete.
John looked high upslope and saw the mouth of the Amphitheater. It was a small
black crevice in what appeared to be a solid hundred-foot-high wall of stone.
Few visited up here, but everyone knew that on the inside of the formation was
a natural amphitheater open to the sky. From down here, the entrance looked
like the front of an Egyptian tomb with massive, toppled lintels on either
side of the doorway. Then
John saw Kresinski watching him from the corner of the entrance. They were too
far apart for him to distinguish any expression, but the moment their eyes
met, Kresinski turned and disappeared through the crevice. It never failed to
astonish
John how the man's very manner spoke possession. The screaming kept on, then
abruptly quit. Next to that agony, the heavy metal music seemed silly and
pretentious. There was nothing more to be learned down here, John decided.
"Want me to take some of your load?" he offered to Pete.
Pete heard the urgency in John's voice. "Guess not," he said. "We're about
there."
They weren't, not by a half hour or so, and the load was heavy. But at least
John had offered.
John waited until the group picked its way diagonally to the edge of the scree
field and then resumed his steady loping trot up the middle. Rocks teetered
underfoot.
Goat, his father used to call him. Joe, you and the goat, go show us how to
run in them mountains. And he and his brother would tear off racing for the
top of a mesa, hopping from rock to rock, drawn by the mountain and powered by
the wind and their father's pride. See, he'd tell snaggletoothed roughneck
compañeros over for a
Bud, that there's how Apaches used to do it. After about ten minutes he
reached the entrance. There was a small flat ledge like a porch at the mouth
of the crevice.
Delwood was sitting there in the cool shade, dejected.
John didn't bother hiding his respirations this time. "Where is he?" he
panted.
"In there," said Delwood. "I can't go back in again. I don't want to. Sammy
kicked me out." More quietly, he added, "I barfed."
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"The rangers inside?" John asked. He tried to think who would have come up.
Several of the younger rangers could always be counted on in emergencies.
Besides
Liz, two were trained paramedics, and that came in very handy for packaging
and stabilizing fallen climbers.
"What rangers?"
"Nobody told the rangers?" said John. He was surprised, then angry. The pain
he'd heard was begging for morphine, and if the injuries were half of what
Pete had described, then it was going to take trained hands just to hold the
pieces together.
"No. Kreski said we take care of our own. The rangers would just kill him."
"They'd do what?"
"You know, like bang the litter around. Or try a chopper extraction like that
Teton rescue." The Teton rescue had entered local lore when an injured Wyoming
teenager
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light was plucked from the saddle on the Grand, then got
accidentally dropped. "It makes sense. The rangers don't give a shit. They
can't even find Tuck. And after the lake...
maybe they just might kill him."
John looked out across the Valley. His thoughts were spinning. The center was
no longer holding. They were out of control. Could people really be believing
in ghosts and karma and killer rangers? The Valley was a place of illusions.
With its gigantic curtains of stone and sunlight, it fostered illusions. Here
you could believe life was a poem. You could close your hands on the rocky
walls of the world and say, here is everything. But the illusions had come
unfastened from their moorings and were crashing against common sense. Why
should a ranger kill a climber? They were practically the same species. Just
another tribe.
"Yeah, well we need some rangers," he said.
Delwood looked up from the shadows. "Kreski said "
"Get some rangers," John commanded. "Find Tip. Or Stammberger. They'll come."
"It's too late," said Delwood. "We'll have him down before "
"Get the rangers," said John.
"Delwood clambered stiffly to his feet. "Okay, already. I got to get my pack
first. It's
in there."
"Don't bother. I'll bring it down."
"Okay." Delwood was not relishing the thought of having to descend quite yet.
"Are those guys bringing water? I could use some water."
"Tell them Bullseye's dying," he said.
"Okay," said Delwood. None too vigorously, he moved to the edge of the porch.
It took your breath away to look down the long, steep slope. It wasn't much
different from standing on top of a Mayan pyramid and dreading the staircase
down.
Delwood's hesitation made John realize how intimidating the hillside was going
to prove, especially with six people and a litter.
"Tell someone we need more ropes," said John. "Lots more. And tell them bring
the cable." There was a five-hundred-foot spool of half-inch braided cable
down in Camp
Four that they sometimes used on big-wall rescues. Sideways, Delwood reached
down with his left foot and tentatively found a rock. John debated racing down
himself, but there was too much that needed doing up here. Among other things
someone had to curb Kresinki's bird-brained tyranny and his "We take care of
our own."
Delwood picked his way down another few yards. He was cowed by the loose
rocks.
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He looked back up and grinned his embarrassment. "Downhill always kills me,"
he said.
John nodded indifferently. Chagrined, Delwood pushed himself to go faster. It
was a mistake. His foot released a stone. The stone triggered a small cascade
of rocks that gathered size and power. In slow motion the effects immediately
began to fan out,
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light creeping wider the farther down the rock slide
progressed. He froze, stupefied by his error. Dust shot into the air. The mass
of rocks snowballed larger and wider, and suddenly it appeared to be so
sluggish that it would slow and even stop. But individual rocks had begun [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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