2

Mackenzie’s corded forearms wrestled the steering wheel. Insects crashed into the Jeep’s windshield, leaving smears; on the highway ahead lay a black watery heat mirage. A roadside sign flashed past: “Industry we do desire.… Interested? Please Inquire!” The painted letters had been faded gray by the sun.

He left the blacktop at the head of the pass. The Jeep rattled across the rails of the cattle-guard and Mackenzie put it recklessly down the washboard ruts of the dirt road. Everything shook; there was a clattering din. Impelled by haste he didn’t let up until he passed the turnoff to the Recreation Area. Then the road narrowed and began to twist and he was forced to drop it into second gear.

He went grinding on up into the pines; the Jeep humped painfully over roots and rocks. Finally in thinning air he reached the fork. Little shingle signs pointed both ways: RANGER STATION. CAMPGROUND. He went through the trees toward the station.

Smyley was at the foot of the fire tower waiting. “Heard you coming a mile back. You trying to wreck the Jeep or just set a new land-speed record?”

Mackenzie got out. The dog came out from under the cabin and stretched lazily and came forward to have her ears scratched. Mackenzie said, “Good pooch,” and started to unload the supplies from the back of the Jeep.

Smyley waddled over. “Let me give you a hand.”

Mackenzie didn’t want help but there was no way to get rid of the relief man until the Jeep was unloaded. They hauled the grocery sacks inside the cabin.

Smyley put his fists in the small of his back and flexed his spine, rearing far back. “Want some help putting it away?”

“No thanks.”

“Just talk a blue streak, don’t you, Sam.”

“Sure.” Mackenzie went outside and waited until Smyley gave it up and came out.

Smyley gave him an accusing look. “Some of us take kindly to company when we get a chance at it.”

“Sorry, Smyley. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m in a solitary mood, that’s all.”

“What’s bugging you, Sam?”

“This and that. Never mind.”

“Tell me one thing, will you?”

“What?”

“Where do you go on your days off?”

“Here and there.”

“Jesus Christ.” Smyley rubbed his big belly and glanced down at Mackenzie’s feet. “Nice old dog. She got a name?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she did at one time.”

Smyley got into the Jeep. “Somebody was telling me—did you used to be a doctor or something? Psychiatrist, they said.”

“Yes.”

“What the hell are you doing up here then?”

“My job.” Mackenzie watched him shake his head in disgust and drive away. Then he went inside the cabin and unpacked the supplies. He gave the dog a Milk Bone and went up the ladder into the tower and did a binocular sweep of the mountain forests. He recorded the sweep in the log and checked the radio, broke open the new decks of cards and laid out a double-pack board of solitaire.

The newspaper story kept intruding on his contentment. Finally he climbed down to the cabin and read the story again.

The dog heaved herself on ancient limbs to the larder and he gave her another Milk Bone. She didn’t eat it. She took it outside, perhaps to bury it.

Once every three weeks I see a newspaper, he thought, and I had to pick this one. Odds of twenty to one.

He read it twice. Duggai was a sort of bad tooth that Mackenzie seemed compelled to keep biting and prodding with his tongue.

He went outside and the dog brought him a stick; Mackenzie spent ten minutes throwing it for the dog to fetch; the dog was too old to do more than trot after it. Afterward MacKenzie went back up to the tower, moving up the ladder with a grace that betrayed quite well-tuned muscular coordination for a physique barely shy of fifty years’ age. It was just about all he had to do—calisthenics and isometrics. Otherwise sedentary in the fire tower he’d have gone to atrophy—constant head colds and bellyaches like Wilder or flaccid fat like Smyley, the relief man. Smyley was a reader; doing the circuit from tower to tower he always had his knapsack filled with paperbacks. Wilder was a deep thinker who worried a great deal about ecology and the world; with nothing to do in the towers but worry about Armageddon it wasn’t surprising Wilder had heartburn and sinus trouble. And me? I just get musclebound—in body and mind.

Nevertheless he never could wait to get back to his isolated cocoon after a weekend’s liberty. It was the frantic impulse toward his safe hermitage that always brought him home at top speed in the Jeep. Comes right down to it, I’m happy here and how many can make that claim? He had to smile.

He still had the Sacramento newspaper; he tossed it on the desk and did a sweep of the mountains, searching through the glasses in a deliberate grid pattern until he’d completed the circuit. Down at the foot of the tower the dog was excavating to bury the Milk Bone at the foot of one of the stilts that supported the rickety fire tower. Mackenzie leaned out over the railing. “You’re digging so close you’ll knock the whole thing over, you stupid twirp.” The dog wagged her tail briefly to acknowledge she knew he was talking to her. Mackenzie went back inside the glass enclosure and down with the newspaper.

KILLER SOUGHT AFTER ASYLUM ESCAPE

San Francisco, July 11 (API). Calvin Duggai, 27, committed to a state mental hospital for the criminally insane since his trial in 1972 on five counts of manslaughter, escaped Tuesday night from the California State Hospital at Cochino, in Marin County north of San Francisco.

In making his escape Duggai apparently tunneled through a second-story exterior wall and climbed over a 12-foot steel fence.

Dogs employed in the search failed to trace Duggai because of Tuesday night’s heavy rain, which had washed the spoor away by the time the escape was discovered yesterday morning.

According to Highway Patrol Lt. Richard Loomiston, Duggai allegedly broke into a house one mile from the prison hospital before dawn Wednesday. He may have stolen guns as well as clothing and food from the house. Duggai’s fingerprints were found on several objects in the house, which has been unoccupied for several days, its owners vacationing.

Lt. Loomiston stated that all leads are being pursued. A dark brown camper-body pickup truck, California license plates XVZ237W, was stolen at some time before dawn from a residence on the outskirts of Cochino, and the theft may be connected with Duggai’s disappearance.

Police are emphasizing that if seen, Duggai should not be approached. “He is extremely dangerous and may be armed. Anyone having information about his whereabouts should immediately call local police or the Highway Patrol,” Lt. Loomiston said.

Calvin Duggai is described by police as a Navajo Indian, height 6′ 1″, weight 205 pounds. Hair black, eyes brown, complexion swarthy. The fugitive has a three-inch scar on the back of his left hand extending from the wrist to the center knuckle.

Tracks left in the wet ground at the hospital indicate that Duggai may be limping as a result of his leap to freedom. Color and description of his clothing are unknown pending the return of the householders from whose wardrobe it was stolen.

In 1971 Calvin Duggai, a Vietnam combat veteran, was arrested and charged in Barstow after five men died in the Mohave Desert collecting spent shells on the Randsburg Wash Test Range during the Independence Day weekend.

Tire tracks and other evidence led police to Duggai’s Barstow shack, where his pickup truck still contained 17 buckets filled with empty brass cartridge cases.

According to evidence presented at Duggai’s trial, the six men—described as “scavengers”—had driven into the restricted Randsburg Wash range in the pickup for the purpose of collecting shell casings ejected from Air Force planes during gunnery practice. Such brass casings can be sold to scrap dealers for 55¢ a pound.