THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART THIRTY:

Pete stood quietly, watching Roscoe, the bloodhound, begin to work his way along the banks upstream. Moments before, one of his men had handed him a plastic bag with a man's watch

in it. With a braille readout, there was no doubt it was Marshall's. But Roscoe had indicated clearly after many attempts to track where Calvin might have left the stream, that he'd lost all interest in the downstream area. What that said to Pete was that the convicts had gone downstream, yes, but then circled back. The watch was a clear plant.

Then his phone rang and it was Mike, his voice excited. "Pete, the guide dog really seems to

be on to something. We're in an area 'bout half a mile upstream where a bunch of rocky ledges come out from the right bank. Looks to me like someone tried to cover tracks some while ago. Snowmelt makes it harder to tell now, but sure looks that way to me. Dog's all excited. Wants

to go up the hill."

"Mike, we'll be coming down your way immediately. You and Barry wait right there. Don't go after them, you hear me. Wait for us!"

Mike relayed this information to Eden and Barry. Evidently Pete had not seen Eden going with them. He knew Pete would be really upset that she was along.

"Wait here?" Eden said, her eyes not moving from Wadsworth, who was straining at the leash

so hard Mike could barely hold him. Then her gaze moved up the long, wooded slope. Marshall had gone that way. He was up there... somewhere. "Not on your life, Mike. Not on his life."

Barry spoke up. "Ma'am, I'm sorry but we've got to do what Pete said. He's in charge here."

Eden looked at Barry, her eyes flashing. "He's not here."  She started up the hill, her boots squishing in the soft, muddy soil beneath the half-melted snow.

Barry ran up, taking her forearm in his hand. "Sorry, Ma'am. I know you're upset, but I can't let you go up there."

Tears sparked on her lashes. "Officer, you can't begin to imagine just how upset I am." With that, she took him by surprise, yanked her arm free of his loose grip and pushed him hard in

the center of his chest so that he fell on his rear. Then she took off running up the slope.

No way was Wadsworth going to let Eden go up the slope without him. He scrambled forward, pulling Mike to his knees. Mike, a big man and very strong, had the loop of the leash around

his wrist, not just in his hand, and so he managed to keep hold of the dog. "You ok, Barry?"

he puffed as he scrabbled to his feet, not easy with Wadsworth still pulling so hard.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Mike." He looked with a bit of chagrin at Eden's back getting further away

by the second.

"I have to go after her, Barry. You know that. What are you going to do?"

Barry got to his feet, brushing snow off his pants. "The rest of them should be along pretty quick. I'll wait here and make sure everybody goes in the right direction."

Mike smiled slightly. "Not going to be too hard to do."  Eden was slipping as she ran, her hands coming down to brace herself, leaving tracks a mile wide.

"Good thing, " Barry commented, "that Roscoe won't loose Calvin's scent no matter how she messes it up."

Mike adjusted the position of his revolver. He'd served for years as sort of a back-up deputy

in this county of widely-scattered population.  Barry observed the motion. "Damn it! I can't

let you go up there without me, Mike, no matter what Pete ordered."

With Wadsworth rather heaving Mike along, the two men started up the slope after the determined woman.

Marshall lay quietly, his mind clear again for a bit. Had Wadsworth been with him and left again? He'd swear Wadsworth had been there for a while. Thinking of Wadsworth brought Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to mind again and as he lay there he quoted aloud, poetic

phrases broken by coughing:

"O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, aye, and the yellow leaves,
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear." **

He'd begun to hear it. Not that he wanted to, but that his body was simply giving out on him. And, so, that solemn 'hymn of Death' had been weaving its way through his inner ear for some time now. He knew what it was. He'd heard its beginning notes there in the muddy gully. 

Eden.  She had found him then. There was to be no finding of him now. He knew that, too.

His fingers moved, feeling snow under them. There was something really not right about that. What was it? It took him long minutes to think what it was. It was Eden. Miles had died in the snow. That was how they'd told her they'd found his body. Lying still and cold in the snow.

That would be how they'd find him. Some day. If they ever found him. He'd be lying still and cold in the snow and someone would go to her and tell her. Eden. Hearing that...twice.

He lay there, the tactile memory of her hair sliding through his fingers, the smooth skin of her neck, very clear to him. He could hear her voice, hear it when it was full of laughter, hear it when it was full of wanting to know, hear it when it changed timbre in times of passion. Eden.

No. He could not let her hear that news twice. He forced himself to sit up, waiting while a spinning sensation slowly stopped. No. He could not be found dead in the snow. He would not. 

Getting his legs painfully under him, he waited again until a spasm of coughing passed before

he could pull himself to his feet. Finally standing, holding himself upright with a desperate grip on a young pine, he listened. There was...something.  Was it the sound of water moving over stones? It was a bit distant still, but it sounded to him like it might be. The steady drip of moisture from the canopy above made it almost like a light rain now. He turned to face the
direction the water sounds were coming from, both arms stretched out, lurching from tree support to tree support. As the burbling of the stream grew closer, Longfellow still close to

the surface of his dimming brain, he said more lines from various poetry aloud. Somehow, the sound of his own voice made him seem less totally alone.

"In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter."

He coughed violently, skipped a couple of lines, then went on...

"...And here, amid
The silent majesty of these deep woods,
Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth,
As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air
Their tops the green trees lift." ***

He stopped. The stream was right in front of him. He listened carefully. The waters were flowing to his right. That was odd. When he'd walked up the stream with the two men, had left it and he'd stood a moment on the bank, the stream had been flowing to his left. He sagged. A different stream. It had to be a different stream. Damn, damn, damn!

He needed to think, but it was so...hard. Thoughts came and went, skittering and scattering like a bag of dropped marbles. "Think, Marshall!" he ordered himself sternly.

Ok, it was a different stream. Deal with it. It was at the bottom of the ridge he'd been taken up. He hadn't gone up any other ridge. He hadn't been able to. So this stream had to be somewhere at the base of that ridge, only further over to the side. That meant it probably flowed toward

the same general area as the other, didn't it? If he followed it downstream, he'd be going away
from the ridge and toward the road, right? If he could find the road, a car would come along sooner or later. He could wait there at the road. That was all he had to do. Find the road and wait there. He could do that.

Exploring near where he stood, he located another branch he could use as a guide cane. He could barely keep on his feet, but he willed himself forward. One more step, he kept telling himself. This step and then one more. On and on and on until he lost track of why he was doing it, only that he must do it.

The going along this particular stream was actually easier than the one they'd come up. Here the water found its way through a flatter valley bottom where, in the summer, tall grasses grew right down to its edge. Now the grass was brown and wet and bent nearly flat under the weight of melting snow. There were much fewer rocks and what trees there were were widely spaced and easy to locate with his branch. He found, after half an hour of this, that he could let go of thinking almost entirely and just slog along, using his branch as an extension of his arm to avoid rocks and trees. In his mind, he'd locked onto keeping the small stream to his left and just going ahead. Everything else in his brain curled into a ball and switched itself off.

Completely oblivious, he walked along the stream right under the bridge that took the two-lane road over it, never knowing the road was there.

ON TO PART 31

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**First Longfellow quote is from "Autumn"

***Second quote is from "The Spirit of Poetry"