The idea was to get as far inland as possible before daylight, because we were supposed to have come north through the mountains from Galichnik, and then west toward Cetinje, and therefore it was undesirable to be seen near the coast. Also there was a particular spot about ten miles in, southeast of Cetinje, where we wanted to get something done before dawn. Ten miles in four hours was only a lazy stroll, but not in the dark across mountains, with Wolfe for a pacemaker.
He developed several annoying habits. Realizing that we were at the crest of a climb before I did, he would stop so abruptly that I had to brake fast not to bump into him. He would stumble going uphill but not down, which was unconventional, and I decided he did it just to be eccentric. He would stand still, with his head tilted back and swiveling from side to side, for minutes at a time, and when we were well away from the coast and undertones were permitted and I asked him what for, he muttered, “Stars. My memory has withered.” The implication was that he was steering by them, and I didn’t believe it. However, there were signs that he knew where he was; for instance, once at the bottom of a slope, after we had traveled at least eight miles, he turned sharply right, passed between two huge boulders where there was barely room for him, picked a way among a jungle of jagged rocks, stopped against a wall of rock that went straight up, extended his hands to it, and bent his head. Sound more than sight told me what he was doing; he had his hands cupped under a trickle of water coming down, and was drinking. I took a turn at it too and found it a lot better than what came from the faucet in Bari. After that I quit wondering if we were lost and just roaming around for the exercise.
No hint of dawn had shown when, on a fairly level stretch, he decelerated until he was barely moving, finally stopped, and turned and asked what time it was. I looked at my wrist and said a quarter past four.
“Your flashlight,” he said. I drew it from a loop on my belt and switched it on, and he did the same with his. “You may have to find this spot without me,” he said, “so you’d better take it in.” He aimed his light to the left down a slope. “That one stone should do it — curled like the tail of a rooster. Put your light on it. There’s no other like it between Budva and Podgorica. Get it indelibly.”
It was thirty yards away, and I approached over rough ground for a better look. Jutting up to three times my height, one corner swept up in an arc, and it did resemble a rooster’s tail if you wanted to use your fancy. I moved my light up and down and across, and, using the light to return to Wolfe, saw that we were on a winding trail.
“Okay,” I told him. “Where?”
“This way.” He left the trail in the other direction and soon was scrambling up a steep slope. Fifty yards from the trail he stopped and aimed his light up at a sharp angle. “Can you make it up to that ledge?”
It looked nearly perpendicular, twenty feet above our heads. “I can try,” I said rashly, “if you stand where you’ll cushion me when I fall.”
“Start at the right.” He pointed. “There. Kneeling on the ledge, the crevice will be about at your eye level, running horizontally. As a boy I used to crawl inside it, but you can’t. It slopes down a little from twelve inches in. Put it in as far as you can reach, and poke it farther back with your flashlight. When you come to retrieve it you’ll have to have a stick to fork it out with. You must bring the stick along because you won’t find one anywhere near here.”
As he talked I was opening my pants and pulling up my sweater and shirt to get at the money belt. Preparations for this performance had been made at Bari, wrapping the bills, eight thousand dollars of them, in five tight little packages of oilskin, and putting rubber bands around them. I stuffed them into my jacket pockets and took off my knapsack.