"I've got to sit up," Frieda said. Anna understood. Too long on one's back was disorienting. She left Frieda and returned with McCarty's permission to let her sit as long as she had help, wasn't left alone, and the cervical collar remained in place.

"God, that feels good," Frieda said as she gently worked her arms and shoulders. "Have you ever had a tooth crowned? Lain in the dentist's chair till you felt you were going to La La Land or bite the next finger that came into your mouth?" Anna nodded. "Like that."

She drank from the water bottle secured in the Stokes near her hand. "Are we alone?" she asked.

Anna looked over her shoulder. They were on the end of the ledge. The others seemed occupied; no one listened. "As alone as we'll ever be down here," she said sourly.

"Good. I'm tired of being a good sport, a real trooper. This sucks. I hate it. I hate everybody and everything, and I especially hate this blasted cave and sincerely hope all caves the world over fill with bat shit. God," she said with a deep-seated sigh. "God, but I needed that. Now I can be cheerful and grateful and optimistic for another hour or so."

Anna and Frieda were in the midst of a repast consisting of Beanie Wienies, granola bars, and cold Chef Boyardee ravioli; treats Anna packed in, unable to face a diet of MREs, government-issue meals ready to eat.

A caver Anna'd seen but not spoken to invaded their picnic. Irritation, always close to the surface in an enclosed world, prickled under her skin. This was the guy who had badgered Frieda on the haul out of Tinker's. Despite the confined space, he managed a swagger. Munk, Kelly Munk. Anna fished his name out of the fog of conversational fragments she'd swum through during the past eight hours.

Munk was young but not young enough to be excused, early thirties. Muscles bulged from hours at the gym. Flat, tiny ears were stuck on a square head. Muscle ridged the points of his jaws. Anna recognized the type. The only description the Hodags would approve of was egomaniac. Every EMT class had one; the world was a TV show, and he was the star.

"Since we've got a minute, I thought I'd check your packaging," he said. "You're putting a lot of strain on this group. What do you weigh? One fifty? One sixty?"

Frieda's mouth crumpled at the corners. Confidence and courage leached away.

Munk reached to rearrange the patient's catheter tubing.

"Don't." Anna grabbed a meaty wrist.

Munk sat back on his heels, his eyes small, carplike. "She's not packaged properly. Holden may be an okay caver, but he's no EMT."

A number of arguments came to mind, but Anna knew she'd be wasting her breath. "Go away," she said.

"I think Frieda-"

"Away. Far, far away."

"Ahoy!" rang out from across the void.

A dozen lamps switched on, beams crisscrossing like searchlights at a mall opening, to center on two figures waving from a narrow aperture on the opposite side and near the top of the chamber that opened into Razor Blade Run. The response from the cavers in the lounge was exuberant. Everyone, including Anna, shouted and hullabalooed like castaways sighting a ship. The energy of the rescue, the quest, the cause, made them all brothers, tied them together in a way they would miss when the littles of the workaday world pried them apart again.

"Landline!" came the shout.

"Good work," Holden called back. Energized by the sight of the others, the rigging team returned to work with redoubled vigor.

Holden came over to where Anna and Frieda rested. An uncompromising look from the mild blue eyes relieved them of Munk's presence. "How're ya doing?" Holden asked as he straddled a rock and made himself at home.

"I'm good," Frieda said firmly. "You guys are doing all the work. I get a free ride."

"You'd do it for any one of us," he reminded her. "And will probably have to this year or next."

Frieda didn't say anything, but it was clear she appreciated the thought.

"Are you up to being famous for a minute? Now that they've brought the phone line down you can bet there's going to be a newspaper guy on the other end wanting to talk to the heroine."

Frieda looked pained. "I hadn't thought of that," she admitted.

"You don't have to do it. You don't even have to make any excuses. If it bothers you, we'll just make like static and hang up. That equipment is left over from the Korean War. Who's to say it's not going to break down?" He smiled what he probably thought was a wicked smile, but on his worn and weathered face it was so sweetly mischievous, Anna could have kissed him.

Knowing she had an out gave Frieda courage. "I'll talk," she said. "My folks are probably glued to the television, sweating bullets. They're old. I was Mom's midlife crisis. If I don't call for three days they think I've been carried off by white slavers. I can imagine what they're going through with this mess. They'll feel better if they hear from me that I'm still alive."

"Don't worry," Holden said. "It won't be just you yakking. As soon as a phone shows up, all of a sudden everybody's got somebody they've just got to talk to. We'll probably take a half-hour break for the doggone gabfest." He glanced at his watch. "Not so bad, I guess. By the time we get up that other side we'll have been truckin' for nearly seven hours, and Razor Blade Run is going to be a fun one to rig. Be good to have everybody fresh."

The three of them looked across the pit to the keyhole in black on the ceiling. Razor Blade was rimed with a miniature forest in glittering aragonite crystals, a winter wonderland in snow white that stretched for nearly twenty yards. Some of the flowers were of a size and intricacy seldom seen before and never in such abundance. Aragonite bloomed in wild snowflake patterns, crystals growing from white root-like bulbs of the same substance. Lechuguilla's treasure was its formations and the wonder they created in the too-often jaded imagination of man.

Tears started in Frieda's eyes. The first Anna had seen. "No way," she said. "I won't do it. This litter will go through there like a bulldozer. What I don't ruin, you guys will, manhandling me. Get me out." She began to fight the straps that held the lower half of her body in the Stokes. "I'll walk it. Get me a stick."

She fell back, tears streaking the mud on her cheeks. "There's not a stick for a day's travel in any direction," she said.

"Lean on me," Anna offered lamely, at a loss how to comfort her.

"It can't be done," Frieda said.

Holden smiled. It was inoffensive. The smile of a child. "Au contraire," he said. Anna could almost see the miles of rope and rigging stringing through his brain like the solution to a complex trigonometry problem.

He started to lay a hand on Frieda's arm but didn't, and Anna sensed for the first time what an essentially shy man he was. "I got it covered. Remember who you're talking to here: Mr. Leave Nothing. Not Even Footprints. Lookie." With his light he pointed to the narrow top of the keyhole. "We're gonna rig you through there. No decorations. Straight line, like thread through the eye of a needle. Bad climb, good haul. You've got to go by your lonesome. There's just room for the litter. Not even a place for your scrawny little lady." He winked at Anna.

"Good. Okay." Frieda was so relieved she would have agreed to be shot through the keyhole by a cannon. Holden stayed a minute longer to give her a chance for second thoughts. "Really," she said at last. "Alone is fine."

"I didn't doubt it," Holden said.

When he'd moved out of earshot, Anna asked, "Why didn't you tell him about the glove on the rock? Both he and Oscar should know." Anna's only reason for not reporting it was Frieda's return to consciousness. In regaining her mental powers, she had regained the right to make her own decisions. "Do you want me to call him back?"