A Time of Predators

A rustle of foliage over across the clearing jerked his head around toward the cliff. Into that foliage a dark shape was just disappearing. Champ ran a few steps in that direction, then stopped. How the hell had Halstead gotten over there? Champ hadda keep him from working his way back to the gravel drive, and getting away; but he hadda warn Rick, too. Standing in the moonlight, he bawled Rick’s name.

“Hey, Rick! Hey! Outside here! I seen him! C’mon!”

Then he turned and ran heavily across the clearing toward the bluffs. He crashed into the foliage, then stopped to listen.

Inside the cabin, Heavy, who had been telling Rick and Julio that it was just a blown fuse, stopped in mid-word. He already had lit the old-fashioned kerosene lamp, so they could see one another. At Champ’s shout, Rick’s face went white, and he whirled on Heavy.

“You goddamn fool!” he cried in a high voice. “You and your goddamn fuse box! It was him! Halstead!”

“Let’s go!” shouted Julio. “We have to help Champ!”

But when they got outside, into the open beside the Triumph, they could see no Champ. They could see quite well by the gibbous moon now hanging above the banked clouds; they could hear the incessant surf baying angrily at the fence of rocks that protected the cove; but they could neither see nor hear anything human.

Rick, flashlight in one hand and .32 in the other, made a short crablike rush to get under the cover of the car. “Get into the shadows!” he yelped. “Don’t give him a clear target to shoot at.”

Crouched beside him, Julio said, “How do you know he’s armed?”

“If you were him, would you come down here without a gun?”

Heavy grunted. “There he is! I see him! On the cliff!”

A dark shape indeed was swarming nimbly up the rough stone face of the bluff, already a good twenty feet above the bushes. Rick ran into the open, raised the .32 to jerk off a shot. Nothing happened. He brought the gun down, looked at it blankly, then thumbed off the safety and raised the gun to try again. He jerked the trigger as fast as he could, so the light gun bucked and spat in his hand, eight times. Then Julio caught his arm.

“For Chris’ sake, man, cool it! Champ is going up after him!”

The clip was empty anyway. Rick realized that the smaller shape had disappeared into an irregular strip of shadow, about forty feet up the cliff, which seemed to be cast by an overhang of some sort. Below he could see Champ’s heavier, slower shape moving cautiously upward.

“C’mon! We can go up and help—”

“No!” Rick’s voice rapped out to still Julio’s. He hefted the .32 in his hand. “The clip’s empty. We’ll load up first, and then—”

“But we can’t let Champ go up against him alone—”

“—and we can’t afford to get picked off one by one, either.”

“We oughta check the cars,” Heavy cut in. Sweat stippled his moon face. “I mean, if he did something to the cars...”

“First we reload,” Rick said with finality.

“But what about Champ!” Julio almost yelled. “He’s up there...”

Fifty feet above, Champ’s iron fingers had found a ledge. With a leg-up and a lithe twist, he was lying on a narrow path. End of the line for Halstead: but was he to the right or to the left?

Champ held his breath, listening. Nothing. Far below, in the moon-touched clearing, he could see the others arguing about something, because he could hear their raised voices if not the words. As he watched, they turned toward the auto. Pride welled up in Champ.

They were going to let him take Halstead alone! They trusted him not to foul it up! Rick sure knew how to make a guy feel good.

From his left came a very cautious scraping sound, and a single pebble was flicked off into space by an incautious foot beyond a concealing outjut of rock. It was not repeated, but it was enough. Halstead! His head drawn down between his shoulders like that of a wild animal on the stalk, Champ began inching silently forward, toward the bulge of rock which concealed his unsuspecting prey from view.

Chapter 29

Curt had come in through the narrow neck of the cove at dusk, so the last rays of the sun, glinting yellow-white off the water, would dazzle any observer on the beach. The swim from the adjoining beach to the south had been hampered by the kelp beds, for these huge leathery sea plants formed a thick layer of stems and foliage at the surface which reeked of iodine and often forced Curt to swim underwater. Without Preston’s mask and snorkel and flippers, it would have been impossible. The rubber suit had insulated him against the mid-fifties water.