The Empty Trap Read Free

why he should be made so uncomfortable. When he tried to move pain brought a threatening blackness. His right hand and arm seemed willing to move when he willed it. He brought his right hand up close to his face. He turned his hand over and looked with distant curiosity, with a clinical remoteness, at the great tear in the heel of his palm, at the thick flap of skin and flesh that lay back over his wrist. It bled slowly.
    Inch by painful inch he turned his body to the right, toward the cliff face, moving his face back from the corner of rock. The hardness that had been across his back now bit into his waist. After another few inches he turned the rest of the way suddenly and the hard thing was across his belly and he was jackknifed across it. And he looked down a steep sickening slant. There was brown rock and sun on steaming brown rock, and a few trees with knotted trunks no bigger than his forearm. Far below him he saw a patch of color, of red and white. He closed his eyes. The height made him feel sick. When he could look again, he knew it was the car. His car. His mind and memory until that moment had been likea dry stream bed. The single act of recognition of the car was like opening a dam at the head of the stream. The waters came roaring down, turbulent, filling it from brim to brim.
    He closed his eyes again. Blood pounded in his head. Have to think, he told himself. Hanging across a tree. Broken all to hell. Thrown clear. Ought to be dead. Can very easily become dead. Just wiggle a little. Slide off the tree. Never feel a thing after the first bounce.
    But it would be nice to see Tulsa Haynes. And Benny Bernholz. And Giz Valerez. And Harry Danton. Maybe, most of all, Harry Danton.
    He felt as though the tree was slowly cutting him in half. He could see his legs, ankles, feet. Both shoes were gone. His left foot was twisted crazily to the side, the ankle big as a melon. Blood dripped from the toes of the right foot. He tried to swallow and could not. His entire face felt numb below the eyes. He touched his face with the fingers of his right hand. He could not identify what he felt. Bone in the wrong place. Splintered things that could be teeth. He let the right arm hang. He wept for himself, wept for the broken body. This was the gateway to death; he was a half step away.
    He felt unconsciousness coming, the way a night shadow moves across a lawn. He fought it back. He looked down again. There was the steep drop. Close below the tree was a ledge. It was more of a crevasse than a ledge. The ledge tilted back. He did not see how he could lower himself to it, lower himself gently enough to keep from continuing on down the slope. But life or death had narrowed down to this one lean chance, with the probability that even if he could manage it, death would only be delayed. He knew he was close to passing out. He caught the trunk of the tree in his torn right hand, and using the leverage, he began to worm his way back. The trunk was across his diaphragm, then his chest. He hooked his left elbow over it, moved further. When the trunk came under his chin, the almost useless left arm slipped. The trunk hit him under the chin. His feet swung against the rock and he made a thin squeaking sound when his leftankle banged. His right hand began to slip as his weight slowly opened his fingers. But as his hand opened the toes of his right foot touched the ledge. He found precarious balance, and when he let go with his hand, he fell against the cliff face, supported by his right foot. He caught an edge of rock with his right hand as he started to topple. It delayed him slightly, but then he fell full on his back, head snapping back to strike the rock, and the shadow moved quickly over him, the world turning dark.
    When he came to, it was a world of blue-gray. He could see the sun on the high peaks across the valley. It took him several moments to decide that it must be nearly night rather than dawn. He watched the sun line move up the