THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART THIRTY-ONE:

Roscoe was still trailing Calvin, but now that they had a definitive point of departure from the stream already, his handler, followed by a number of armed officers, hurried upstream to the area of the rock ledges. No one was there and Barry and Mike had left a large section of disturbed muddy snow.

"Woman's with 'em," the handler announced.

Pete didn't have to be told who it was. Sinclair's lady friend. Damn, but this was no place for her. Two convicts on the loose and her trailing after. He had no idea she'd gone off ahead of Mike and Barry.

Roscoe, trained to differentiate scents, had no problem picking Calvin's out of the mish mash closer to the stream. Tracks didn't matter to him. It wasn't tracks he followed, it was scent, and Calvin's scent was strong in his nose, having been emitted from his entire body, wafting into the air much like cigarette smoke, were it visible, and settling against trees, rocks, leaving pockets of  'pool scent' on the ground. He started up the long slope, locked onto a track picture.

Barry and Mike had caught up with Eden. She was tired and gasping in lungfuls of air when they came up beside her. "S...sorry," she said, eyeing Barry. "I hope I didn't hurt you."

"That was accosting an officer, you know."

She hadn't thought of it quite like that at the time. She hadn't thought of anything but getting to Marshall. "You going to arrest me?"

He grinned. "Not this time." He knew he'd probably have done the same thing in her shoes.

This time, Mike and Wadsworth took the lead, and Barry came along beside Eden, helping her over rough places. They were almost to the spot where Calvin and Bart had separated from Marshall when they heard the sounds of the other officers coming up the ridge not far away. Eden was breathing hard and Mike suggested they wait just a minute to give the trackers
a chance to catch up. She had a stitch in her side and didn't have much choice right then.

Pete rounded a section of low underbrush. "I told you to wait," he glowered at Barry. "And what in God's name did you think you were doing in letting a woman come along?"

"I didn't come along!" Eden snapped. "I went and they came, too. It's not their doing."

"You shouldn't be here," he said firmly.

"If anybody should be here, it's me," she replied, then indicated Wadsworth. "And him."

Wadsworth was still straining to go further. "Look," Eden said, "none of that matters. All that counts as that we keep going, not standing around here debating who or what." With that, she turned her back on him and started up the ridge again.

"All right!" Pete called after her exasperatedly. "Just let Roscoe take the lead, will you?"

She paused, not turning to look back, waiting silently until Roscoe and his handler and several officers passed her. Wadsworth wasn't at all interested in Roscoe. He was on his own mission and it had nothing to do with Calvin. He pulled Mike slightly to the right of the others and forged his own way forward.

Before long, they came to a small clearing where it was obvious the three men had stopped.

Pete wouldn't let anybody into the area until Roscoe had gone in first and gotten a track lock

on where Calvin had left it. Sure enough, two sets of tracks led off toward the back side of the ridge.  When Pete was sure he knew where the convicts had gone, he let the others onto the scene. There were a lot of footprints going back and forth and it was evident something had happened here.

Wadsworth was bathed in Marshall's scent. He went here and there about the clearing wherever Marshall had been. Two sets of tracks led to a big old pine snag. Mike looked up. A dead branch had broken off recently. Directly below where it had been the snow was packed as though a body had fallen there. He looked up at the broken end of the branch still on the tree, then closed his eyes.

Eden saw his face. "What are you thinking, Mike?"

"You won't like it."

"Tell me."

"It's nothing I know for sure, but it's what looks to me that might have gone down."

Both Barry and Pete came closer, looking at the branch and the snow below it. Pete whistled.

"If that doesn't beat all!"

"How could they do that?" Barry asked, shaking his head.

Eden, not used at all to crime scenes, had no idea what they were referring to.

Mike licked his lips. "Eden...."

"Mike!" she cried.

"Ok. To me," he paused, "from what I see here, it looks like...it looks possible...that," he licked his lips again. "It looks like what they did was decide not to take Marshall any further with them."

Her eyes widened. "So what did they...do...with him?"

"Ma'am," Pete broke in. "It's likely they had his hands tied and decided to hook him over the branch that's...," he pointed toward the jagged broken end on the tree, "that's been broken off here."

Eden's knees felt weak and Barry grabbed her elbow. "You mean...you're saying that they went off and left him tied to a tree?"

"Basically that, yes," Pete continued, rubbing his hand across his chin.

"His hands up over a branch...up high like that?" she murmured, looking up.

"'Fraid so, Ma'am."

She looked around. "But...but where is he...now?"

Wadsworth was done with the area under the tree and was now straining in a different direction. "I think the dog is trying to tell us," Mike said.

"Look, Mike," Pete sighed. "I've got two convicts on the lose here and a hound who wants to trail 'em. I'll send Barry and two more of my men with you to find the professor, but the rest of us will have to go after the other two. I need to find them before they hurt anybody else. Looks

to me like the guide dog will be all you need to find the guy anyway.  And now we know nobody who's armed or anything is with him, so it'll be safe going that way.  I'll alert the rescue team where we are, which way you're going, so they can cut across and meet you, all right?"

Wadsworth only went a short way before he came to the place where Marshall had fallen and then dragged himself under the low branches of the thick evergreen to sleep.

"Smart," Mike said, nodding his head. "Good place for him to go. Wish he'd stayed there, though."

"He probably figured nobody was coming up this way to look for him," Eden commented grimly. "And he was almost right."

They continued on down the slope. "Good God, look at the tracks he left!" Barry said with another soft whistle. He'd never seen anything like them. They zigzagged down the slope with very plain indications of where Marshall had fallen again and yet again. A tear tracked coldly
down Eden's cheek. What had he been through? What was he going through...now? How many times could he fall and still manage to get up again?  And was he doing it with his hands tied?

She remembered what he'd said about how he needed his hands.

When they came to the huge fallen tree, Wadsworth sniffed along where Marshall had lain, his back against the trunk, then went straight to the gaping hole beyond its root ball and looked down.

"Not there!" Eden sighed, her heart breaking. "He didn't...."

But when she, too, stood at its edge, there was the impression in the soft, snowy moss where a man had lain, its outlines marred when he'd gotten to his knees. All of them looked across to

the far side, where large sections of moss had been ripped loose in his effort to get out of the pit.  She closed her eyes again. The sight of his struggle to climb the far wall tore too much at her heart.


A tiny spring, not more than six inches across, flowed into the stream from the right. It came down over a flat rock upon which grew a hairy, stringy sort of moss, its delicate little tendrils weaving in soft patterns as the thin layer of clear water washed continuously over it. Marshall's
right foot came squarely down atop it and the silky strands proved slipperier than ice, sending him crashing forward. He fell onto the tall bent grasses, the impact of it jarring him out of his stupor and into some semblance of consciousness.

A patch of crystallizing snow lay under his cheek and he extended his tongue, licking moisture from it. Where was he? He couldn't seem to tune into where he was or why he might be there. He found he couldn't breathe while lying on his chest but wasn't sure he could manage
actually rolling onto his back. A few moments of gasping and not getting any air, though, gave him the impetus to try and he pushed with arms and legs, getting himself up onto his left side. He lay there listening to the sound of water burbling past rather close behind him. Had a pipe broken? He couldn't remember the name of the plumber his father had always used. O'Donnell? Was that it? O'Connell? Something like that. He'd have to look it up. But not right now.

He rolled, finally, onto his back, a movement which resulted in the back of his right hand

coming down in the edge of the stream. Damn bathwater was way too cold. He pulled the hand up, letting it rest across his chest, but the weight of it seemed to hurt his ribs.

What had he been doing? Oh, yes, he'd been lecturing on Longfellow. Poor Longfellow. He'd loved sweet Mary Potter so much he'd followed her home from church, so struck by her beauty he couldn't bring himself to speak to her. But he'd married her, by God, he had and settled her into a house surrounded by elm trees. He took her to Europe with him. She died, young, in Rotterdam. Poor Longfellow. So he taught at Harvard for seven years, going about in his flowered vest and yellow gloves, his hair flowing behind him. Then he married Frances, Frances who gave him two sons and three daughters. For them he wrote 'The Children's Hour'.

"Grave Alice and laughing Allegra and Edith with the golden hair," Marshall murmured aloud. But Frances, trying to save locks of her children's hair, attempted to seal the packages with wax and matches and the hair burst into flames. Frances was gone. So he translated Dante into English and went to Europe again. Poor Longfellow.  He lost both his loves. Like Eden. Eden lost both her loves in the snow. Poor Eden.

The thought jarred him as much as the fall had. That was what he'd been doing. Trying to keep Eden from becoming Poor Eden. Oh, God, yes! That was it!

He sat up, having to hold his rib cage so the bones didn't spurt out and fall in his lap. The stream. Surely he would come to the road before much longer?  Hadn't he been stumbling alongside it for several days now? How far could the bridge be?

Getting to his knees, he felt around for his branch, finding it lying halfway into the stream. His legs hurt. He'd fallen so many times there was no place on them that was not bruised and aching. But it was his chest that hurt more than all the rest of him. He could only manage short,
shallow little breaths but each of them impaled his chest wall on some celestial hook. After several minutes, he paused, a loneliness so vast washing over him he'd never known its like. 

"No, Marshall," he gasped aloud. "Don't go there. You don't have to go there."

The sing-song rhythm of The Song of Hiawatha came to him.  There was something comforting in the steady consistency of the meter of the thing, as though one were following a long string through a tunnel, rolling it up in your hands as you went.

"Lonely in the sky was Wabunn'
Though the birds sang gayly to him,
Though the wild flowers of the meadow
Filled the air with odors for him,
Though the forests and the rivers
Sang and shouted at his coming,
Still his heart was sad within him,
For he was alone in heaven."

He didn't know his cheeks were wet with his own tears as he spoke the verse. Eden. He wanted Eden and his heart now ached with the wanting more than his chest ached with the breathing.

Eden.

"Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis...."

Those four lines had always been his favorite Longfellow ever since he was a boy and had first memorized them. Back then he'd fallen in love with the sound of them, now he was in love with the meaning of them.

Eden.

He knew he'd loved her through all the unremembered ages since before the creation of the world. Eden.

Feeling himself starting to crumple, he gripped the branch with both hands, determined to

keep on his feet. His right hand was curved over the top end of the branch and he leaned forward, resting his chin on it. In the quiet of the moment he became aware of a new sound,

one he'd heard before. It was the lapping of the lake against the rocks along its shores. He

knew it was! He straightened. How had he gotten to the lake? The road lay between him and

the lake and he'd never crossed the road, had not intended to cross the road, had planned he
would stop there and wait.

Head lifted, he listened. A distant motorboat went by.  It was definitely the lake.  The inn was just back from the lake...but which way? When they'd left the inn in Eden's car, Bart had

turned left out of the drive. That should mean the inn lay somewhere...that way. He turned, extending his branch, moving it from side to side, checking his path. He'd have to cross the stream. He'd definitely have to do that. Perhaps better here than where it flowed into the lake. Might be deeper there. Have to get his feet soaked again, but there was no help for that. Ok,

it seemed he could get down into it right where he was. No big rocks. He jabbed the branch down, testing the bed of the stream. Didn't seem deep. Maybe not more than 4 or 5 inches. Repeatedly jabbing the branch down, he made it across. The further bank was low, the bent grasses continuing on that side.

Following down the opposite bank, he got to where he was only a few yards from the lake. His diagonal path down the ridge had, all by accident, put him out not more than 500 or so feet from Harold's dock. He didn't know that, though, had no way of knowing that. But he had found the lake and, by God, the inn was somewhere on the lakeshore.

Mike paused at the thinning edge of the forest where the grassy field began to lead down to the smaller creek. Marshall's trail led clearly toward the creek, not straight at all, still zigzagging wildly, yet toward the creek. Excitedly he got his phone out, calling his EMT crew. "Butch," he said, "Mike here. Look, buddy, we're just coming out of the state forest by Miller's Run. Looks like Marshall has made it to the damn creek all by himself. Don't know how he did it. But if he did what I think he did, he'd have followed it down to the road. You guys get down to the bridge over the run and see what you find there."

He turned to Eden. "This is good, Eden. This is really good. Looks like he made it to the bridge, that first one that's closer to the inn."

Her chin trembled with a combination of exhaustion and relief. "He might be there?" she asked hopefully.

"Or somebody might've picked him up. Maybe that."

They were almost to the creek when Mike's phone signaled. "Butch? Marshall there? No? What? Under the bridge? Look, Butch, I can see you guys now."  He waved. "Be right there."

"He's not by the bridge?"

"No, Eden. He's not. Butch is going down to the stream to check for tracks. See what's up."  Marshall's path along the stream was easy to see. How had he missed the bridge? Where had

he gone?

When they got to the bridge, Butch and two other men were down beside the creek. "He walked under the blamed thing, Mike. Just walked right under it."

Standing there, Mike could understand how that had happened. The bridge was small, but high, with plenty of room for a man who couldn't see to pass easily under it and not know it was there.

"Damn!" he said. Wadsworth led him under the bridge and Marshall's tracks continued down the stream. "Heading toward the lake," he murmured. "Probably doesn't know it, but he's heading toward the lake."

"Is that good?" Eden asked.

"Probably, yeah. He gets to the lake, he'll have to turn left or right. Let's hope he turned left. Inn's not far down that way."

"The inn? This puts us close to the inn?"  Even sighted, she'd lost all sense of direction in the forest.

He was at the end of things. That he knew. He'd come to the end of himself.  It was taking as much effort to hang onto consciousness as it was to keep plodding along.  And he was simply

on fire. With trembling fingers he unbuttoned his jacket. It was too hot. He'd taken a wrong

turn somewhere, had passed through Purgatory, and was now entering Hell itself. The flames

of it licked up his body, lingering with their embered fingers on his cheeks, his forehead.

Vaguely, he knew that if he fell again, he wouldn't get up. There was no more getting up left in him. His little gasps of breathing were getting shallower and shallower.  He dropped the branch, no strength left to hold it longer, just plodding, one foot, another foot. On and endlessly on.

The top of his head had exploded a while back. He knew that because he could feel the wet
dripping of his brains down past his ears, curving under his chin. It wasn't sweat. It had to be

his brain. He felt a definite trickle down his spine. Yes. Soon it would reach his feet and he would step on it and then he'd be gone. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe everything

would stop hurting.

Eden.

He couldn't die in the snow because of Eden.

He cupped both sides of his cheeks with his palms. Maybe he could just push a little of his leaking mind back...up? Maybe he could put one foot in front of the other a while more?  His right shin impacted the hard edge of something and he fell forward, lying half on-half off whatever it was.

It was Harold's dock. But he didn't know that.

ON TO PART 32

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