A Serpent In Turquoise. Peggy Nicholson

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СКАЧАТЬ thing he did, it entailed going out there and getting the crazy bitch. Or maybe—“Hang on. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He spun, heading for the rear of the Rover.

      “What happens if I move?” she called behind him.

      “You don’t wanna know.” Returning on the run with a rope, he built a bowline loop. “I’m going to throw you a rope now, okay?”

      She grabbed in the wrong direction. It slipped past her fingers and fell away.

      “I’ll try again.”

      And damned if she didn’t miss again. “Um, by any chance, do you wear glasses?” And she’d lost them in the wreck.

      “I’m seeing triple, okay? Now throw me the fricking rope!” An edge of panic laced her husky voice.

      “Sorry. Maybe if you—Oh, jeez!” he yelled as, in a crackle-storm of snapping branches, the Jeep rolled toward him—entirely upside-down. With its wheels turned up to the sky, it looked like a dying animal.

      “Oh, shoot me,” came her voice, from somewhere down below. “I’m off the edge, aren’t I?”

      “I’m afraid so.” He tied the tail end of his rope to the roll bar on the Rover.

      Down below the cliff face, she’d started laughing. “Lost the love of your life? Chased by rabid lumberjacks? No problemo! Come to the Copper Canyons and leave your troubles behind!”

      “Least it puts ’em all in perspective,” he agreed absently as he twisted the rope over his hip and shoulders in a body rappel. He was a firm believer in equality of the sexes; theoretically there was no reason he should risk his neck for a damned woman driver. Not that reason and women mixed very often, in his experience.

      It was her husky laughter that was the clincher. She wasn’t hysterical; she just had a fine black appreciation for life’s little pratfalls, on top of what must be a whopping concussion. Still, if she showed that kind of guts in the face of disaster, what could he do but match her? “Just hang on now.”

      “Oh, believe me, I’m hanging.”

      Paying out rope, he walked down the cliff face, till he was looking up at the Jeep and the Dangling Beauty.

      An ice cube slid down his spine. Only a couple of big limbs remained; the weight of the car had settled upon them. If they let go—when they let go, he amended, seeing the jagged crack in the crotch of the closer one—then down would come the Jeep like a Detroit-made guillotine, on his head. Two tons of dusty steel would ride him and the woman down to the ground.

      “I’m gonna toss you the rope again,” he said as he coiled up its dangling tail. “And this time, believe me, you want to catch it. Now let your arms hang.” She’d never do it, he realized as he spoke. Though the belt ought to hold her weight, instinct would weld her hands to the steering wheel.

      She drew an audible breath, then said in a rueful moan, “Oh, man.” She let go the steering wheel to hang, arms extended, swaying faintly in the breeze.

      “Good girl. Here it comes.” The loop slapped her wrists and she clawed for it frantically, finally capturing it.

      “Now get the loop around your waist,” McCord instructed.

      Somehow she wriggled into it. “Beautiful!” Quickly he explained what she had to do. She had to release her seat belt, but hang on tightly to the steering wheel, and get herself aimed head-up, feet-down. “I’m wedged in right over here, and I’ll take in your slack. When you’re ready, all you do is let go, then I’ll do the rest. I won’t let you fall.”

      She’d swing into the cliff below him and bang herself good, but she ought to hit feet-first, not head-on. It might work. Except that nobody in his right mind would release that seat belt, no matter how much he wanted to live.

      But she fooled him again. Her hand fumbled at the buckle.

      “Oh, honey, we’re gonna do this,” he almost sang. She was one in a million.

      Somewhere in the tree, something snapped.

      “Um, I hate to say this, Tex, but the buckle seems to be jammed.”

      Another branch crackled—and the Jeep settled one foot closer to Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.

      Chapter 4

      N ot a minute to lose, McCord told himself when the Jeep stopped moving. He scrambled back up to road level, then realized what he had to do. Bending low, he called down through the gap between the car and the cliff. “Uh, honey? Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way. You’ve gotta untie that loop and let it drop.”

      “Are you outta your tiny mind?”

      “Trust me on this. Drop the rope.” That loop around her waist must have felt like her last link to life, but if the Jeep fell when he added his weight to it, the line would saw her in half. A half-mile drop would be kinder.

      She muttered something surly. The rope shivered, then slackened, and McCord was amazed all over again as he coiled it and slung it over one shoulder. “Okay, you’re going to hear a thump, but don’t worry. That’s just me.”

      He leaped—and landed dead center on the Jeep’s chassis, flapping his arms for balance as the Jeep wobbled and wood crackled. His ankle touched hot metal and he swallowed a yelp. “Piece of cake.”

      “Yeah,” she agreed bitterly. “Angel food.”

      She was hyperventilating, it sounded like, as he picked his way along the hot greasy metal till he could reach an upper branch of the pine. It was the only unbroken one in a position to help, and it might hold the two of them.

      “What are you doing up there?” she snarled.

      “Just making us a sky hook,” he said soothingly as he tied the rope around the branch, then knotted in foot loops. Once he’d done that, he shinnied down the rope, to swing there level with her, toeing frantically for the last loop. He found it and settled his weight into it, then drawled cheerily, “Well, hey!”

      Her upside-down face turned back and forth, then homed in when he whistled softly. “This is not the brightest idea you ever had in your life.”

      “You always this bitchy when you’re scared?” He snagged the doorframe to pull himself closer. “Okay, here’s the drill.” He’d cut her loose, while she hung on to the steering wheel. Then she’d rotate, till they were no longer in sixty-nine position. “And then—”

      “I get the picture. Just do it!”

      “Right.” Drawing his Buck Knife from its sheath, he sawed at the seat belt. “Okay, here it comes. It’s all yours!”

      Panting with terror and effort, she worked her legs out, her knees knocking him in the chest as she rotated upright. Then she dangled, treading air, her head stuck somewhere up in the Jeep’s foot well. “N-now what?”

      He grabbed the wheel, pulled himself closer. “Get your legs around my waist.”

      Easier said than done, СКАЧАТЬ