Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories by Bill Pronzini Page B

continued into the sun-baked wastes due west—toward the town of Sandoval, the starting point of their mining expedition two months ago.
    The canteen lay in the shadow of a clump of rabbit brush. Flake picked it up, shook it. Empty. He glanced over his shoulder, saw March a hundred yards away shambling like a drunk, and then struck out again at a quickened pace.
    Five minutes later he found the second canteen, empty, and his urgency grew and soared. He summoned reserves of strength and plunged onward in a loose trot.
    He had gone less than a hundred and fifty yards when he saw the third canteen—and then, some distance beyond it, the vulture. The bird had glided down through the graying sky, was about to settle near something in the shade of a natural stone bridge. Flake ran faster, waving his arms, shouting hoarsely. The vulture slapped the air with its heavy wings and lifted off again. But it stayed nearby, circling slowly, as Flake reached the motionless figure beneath the bridge and dropped down beside it.
    Brennan was still alive, but by the look of him and by the faint irregularity of his pulse he wouldn't be alive for long. His right leg was twisted at a grotesque angle. As badly hurt as he was, he had managed to crawl the better part of a mile in three days.
    The fourth canteen was gripped in Brennan's fingers. Flake pried it loose, upended it over his mouth. Empty. He cast it away and shook Brennan savagely by the shoulders, but the bastard had already gone into a coma. Flake released him, worked the straps on the knapsack on Brennan's back. Inside were the ore samples and nothing else.
    Flake struggled to his feet when he heard March approaching, but he didn't turn. He kept staring down at Brennan from between the blistered slits of his eyes.
    "Flake! You found Brennan!"
    "Yeah, I found him."
    "Is he dead?"
    "Almost."
    "What about water? Is there—?"
    "No. Not a drop."
    "Oh God, Flake!"
    "Shut up and let me think."
    "That's it, we're finished, there's no hope now . . ."
    "Goddamn you, quit your whining."
    "We're going to end up like him," March said. "We're going to die, Flake, die of thirst—"
    Flake backhanded him viciously, knocked him to his knees. "No, we're not," he said. "Do you hear me? We're not."
    "We are, we are, we are . . ."
    "We're not going to die," Flake said.
     
    T hey came out of the desert four days later—burnt, shriveled, caked head to foot with red dust like human figures molded from soft stone.
    Their appearance and the subsequent story of their ordeal caused considerable excitement in Sandoval, much more so than the rich ore samples in Flake's knapsack. They received the best of care. They were celebrities as well as rich men; they had survived the plains of hell, and that set them apart, in the eyes of the people of Sandoval, from ordinary mortals.
    It took more than a week before their burns and infirmities healed enough so that they could resume normal activity. In all that time March was strangely uncommunicative. At first the doctors had been afraid that he might have to be committed to an asylum; his eyes glittered and he made sounds deep in his throat that were not human sounds. But then he began to get better, even if he still didn't have much to say. Flake thought that March would be his old self again in time. When you were a rich man, all your problems were solved in time.
    Flake spent his first full day out of bed renting them a fancy hacienda and organizing mining operations on their claim in the Red Hills. That night, when he returned to their temporary quarters, he found March sitting in the darkened kitchen. He told him all about the arrangements. March didn't seem interested. Shrugging, Flake got down a bottle of tequila and poured himself a drink.
    Behind him, March said, "I've been thinking, Flake."
    "Good for you. What about?"
    "About Brennan."
    Flake licked the back of his hand, salted it, licked off the salt, and drank the shot of tequila. "You'd better forget about