Uneasy Relations by Aaron Elkins Page B

into his thigh. He winced. That was going to be another bruise. The hell with producing a finer implement, he decided. Any old chopper would do, as long as he could operate it with one hand. He tried another blow, harder. Nothing. Even harder. A tiny chip came off the wrong rock. Frustrated, grunting with the effort, he clenched his teeth and raised the hammer stone over his head—
    “What in the world are you doing down there?” Pru McGinnis’s wondering voice floated down to him from the top.
    “Pru!” he cried, looking up. “Am I glad to see you!”
    She looked down at him, thoughtfully chewing on her lower lip. “Umm . . . I don’t suppose you could use a little help?”
     
SIX
     
    “SO I look down and what do I see?”
    Pru was zestfully regaling an enthralled, aghast Julie. “It was awe-inspiring, positively cosmic, as if I was watching the very dawn of mankind re-created before me. There he was, this primitive, hulking creature crouched in his tree, grunting, at the very moment of the invention of tool-making. You could see the intense concentration on his face as he crudely hammered his rocks together, in preparation for coming down from his arboreal abode and standing erect upon the earth on his own two legs.”
    A subdued Gideon offered a modest correction. “Coming
up
from my arboreal abode, actually.”
    Which was the first time Julie relaxed enough to laugh. “But you
are
okay?” she asked for the third or fourth time.
    “I’m fine, honey. A few dings, a few scuffs, but all in all, in pretty good shape for a guy who fell off the Rock of Gibraltar.”
    And now the laughter turned to relieved giggles. “ ‘I appreciate your wifely concern,’ ” she mimicked, dropping her voice an octave and adding a supercilious, mock-English accent, “ ‘but don’t worry, I have
no
intention whatever of falling off the Rock of Gibraltar.’ ”
    “I did not say ’whatever,’” Gideon muttered, but then ruefully laughed along with her. “Next time I’ll pay more attention.”
    They were in the tiny bar-restaurant, midway through the simple, satisfying luncheon of roast chicken, chips, and salad, along with bottles of cold white Montilla wine from across the border. Julie, Gideon, and Pru were at the larger of the two tables, speaking quietly, preferring to keep their conversation private.
    Between the two of them, Gideon and Pru had described how she had found him. She had been walking on the trail without anything in particular in mind when she heard a
clack-clack-clack
sound, “as if someone was banging two stones together.” Curious, she had climbed up to the sentry post, looked down, and found Gideon doing exactly that. She had hurried back to the cable car terminal and located an employee who was able to get hold of a stout, twenty-five-foot electrical extension cord. The two of them had then run back and used the cord to “walk” Gideon up the cliff face.
    “It was really exciting,” Pru declared. “It was
fun
!”
    “It was exciting, all right,” Gideon admitted. “I don’t know about fun. Maybe five years from now it might seem as if it was fun.”
    “And you still really think you might have been pushed?” Julie asked.
    He shrugged. As time had passed, a conviction that he had indeed been pushed had first grown, then shrunk. On the one hand, it seemed impossible that he could have fallen off the Rock on his own, but wasn’t that just what he’d done on those log bridges? No one had pushed him then; he’d managed to fall off without any help. Maybe the same thing had happened here. There was that nasty wind, after all. “I don’t know. I
think
I felt something . . . a push.” He touched his right hip, just above the hip pocket. “Here.” Another shrug. “I think.”
    “You don’t sound very positive.”
    “I’m not. But I just can’t believe I did it all by myself. I mean, did you ever hear of anybody accidentally falling off the Rock of Gibraltar? ”
    “Most people