Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (14 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries
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“We were just talking,” Cloudblower said, and frowned, as though her mind had knotted around a particularly thorny problem. “With the prophet dead, there is little reason for us to stay here any longer. While White Smoke is willing to trade food for some of the ornaments we recovered from the White Moccasins, she is hesitant to allow us to remain. She fears the coughing disease, even though many here are already coughing blood and their flesh is shrinking around their bones.”
“I know,” Browser sighed.
“Flowing Waters has food only because they have
fertile ground and a river to water it. They are surrounded by others without these things. People with failed crops will do anything to fill their bellies. Even sell their children and husbands into slavery. Flowing Waters exists like a fortress. Each of the towns is bristling with warriors. Unless they guard their fields they will be plucked clean. Unless they turn away the refugees, they will be buried under a wall of people. We were asked here by invitation. We should not impose upon that invitation.”
“So, what are we going to do?”
“I will take the Katsinas’ People to Straight Path Canyon to rebuild the great kiva at Streambed Town.”
“While you and I,” Stone Ghost said, “go in search of Two Hearts.”
“Where do you expect to find him, Uncle?” Browser noted the hooded look in Stone Ghost’s eyes.
Stone Ghost steepled his fingers. “He, too, is a creature of habit, one influenced by his birth and lineage. To find his lair, one must follow the path of the spiral, Browser, and there, at its center, he will either find Two Hearts or his corpse.”
Irritated, Browser said, “I don’t know what that means, Uncle.”
The Mogollon elder’s face might have been carved of old cedar wood for all the emotion he displayed.
“What if the White Moccasins attack our people while we’re gone?” Browser asked. “I’m worried about this. I assume that Straighthorn and Jackrabbit are still going with us. Wrapped Hand, Straw Shield, and Two Cones are the best of our remaining warriors, but I don’t think either one of them is suited to be War Chief. They don’t have the experience to lead a war party.”
Cloudblower looked at him with soft brown eyes. “That is true, War Chief, but I do.”
Browser nodded. No one who knew her would question Cloudblower’s ability as either a warrior or a
leader. Her male body, though aging, still exhibited incredible strength, and in past battles, Cloudblower had shown such a thorough understanding of war that Browser, himself, would have had no qualms going into battle under her leadership. But for her interest in Healing and studying the sacred, she would have made an excellent War Chief.
Browser squinted at the coals in the warming bowl. “We don’t have the warriors we once did, Cloudblower, and you’ll have fewer when I leave.”
“This cannot be helped. Sometimes, War Chief, we must do what we must do.”
White Cone had been listening; now he said, “Given enough time, I could send a runner to the south. I could have warriors sent. Upon my orders, they would obey Matron Cloudblower.”
“I’m not sure that’s a wise idea, Elder,” Browser said. “When the word gets around, it will play straight into the hands of our enemies.”
People would distrust the Katsinas’ People even more. They would raid them just to break up such an unholy alliance. It would strengthen the Flute Player Believers, and even unite them against the Katsinas’ People.
“Then consider this: We have room for you in the south,” White Cone said simply. “Our prophet was waiting for the right time to give you the rest of Poor Singer’s prophecy. As he told you last night, much has been lost. You have forgotten things during your wars and migrations. Or, perhaps, they were never told in your lands. We have had our own problems with the drought, with the failure of the fields. Many of our people, too, have lost their way. Now it is time to heal old wounds”—his expression turned weary and defeated—“and to teach the lessons the thlatsinas wish our people to learn.”
“You are asking people to forget everything that has happened for a thousand sun cycles, Elder.”
An unsettling wisdom filled White Cone’s eyes as he asked, “Are we that different, War Chief?”
“Most people will say so, Elder. Our ancestors climbed up from the underworlds; yours fell from the sky as dogs of fire. We come from different origins.”
“The thlatsinas didn’t think so.” The Mogollon smiled the way a man would if he were in possession of some special secret. “But I hear your words, War Chief. Our prophet came here believing that our task would not be easy, but that it was necessary. Sometimes, as I have so recently learned, it is unpleasant to do hard things. That doesn’t lessen the fact that they must be done.”
Browser had no answer for that. Either the old man was a fool, or he was as crazy as a fox that turns silly circles in front of a covey of quail. They get so engrossed with the fox’s lunacy that they fail to realize when they are within distance of a quick leap.
“We will leave tomorrow for Straight Path Canyon,” Cloudblower said with finality.
“And I shall leave with my party before first light,” Stone Ghost replied. He looked at Browser. “I have sent Catkin to pack the things we will need. She has informed Straighthorn and Jackrabbit and sworn them to secrecy. Can you be ready?”
Browser nodded. “I will be ready.”
Conference Room, OMI, Albuquerque, New Mexico
 
 
DUSTY SLUMPED IN the uncomfortable chair, one leg out, the other tucked under him. His left elbow
rested on the wooden veneer of the conference table, and he cupped a can of Coke in his right hand. Maureen sat beside him, an empty and sad look on her face.
He didn’t know what he felt; this was a nightmare. The initial shock of Dale’s death had been numbed by the unfolding roll of revelations about how he’d died. Each atrocity had chipped away part of Dusty’s soul until he had become a husk, like a tamale wrapper left dry and forgotten on a windswept plaza. It was as though he no longer had the strength to feel anything.
Agent Sam Nichols of the FBI sat across from them. When Sid had called him and started to explain what they had guessed about Dale’s death, the agent had dropped everything to drive straight to the OMI. Nichols had a short chunky body, thick black hair, and wore horn-rimmed glasses. Dark stubble lined his square jaw, and his right eye had a slight squint to it, as if it had been injured some time in the past. As he took notes, his pen made fluid strokes across the notepad. A tape recorder ran silently on the table in front of Dusty and Maureen.
Sid Malroun and Bill Hendersen sat at the end of the table, expressions grim, as Dusty forced himself to go over the points one by one. Somehow he had to stay focused, do what they asked him, so he could get out of here and drive to Chaco. He had to see the place where Dale was found or he’d go stark raving mad.
From some deep dark corner of his mind, his dead father, Samuel Stewart, wept—just as he had right after Dusty’s mother left them.
Dusty closed his eyes for a moment. Those same cries had wakened him once in the middle of the night when he’d been seven. He’d opened his eyes and seen his father standing over his bed with a gun to his temple.
“Dr. Robertson didn’t give you any indication that he’d been threatened?” Nichols asked again. “No mention
of the peculiar phone calls he’d been getting? Notes? Nothing out of the ordinary?”
Dusty shook his head. “No. We found out about the phone calls this morning. We haven’t seen Dale since he left Pueblo Animas. He went into Aztec with the new owner of the Pueblo Animas site.”
“Who?”
“Alevy,” Maureen said as she toyed with her thick black braid. “Moshe Alevy. He bought the Animas site after the original investor found out about the burned children.”
Nichols perked up, his one good eye widening. “What burned children?”
“About forty of them,” Maureen whispered. Dusty thought she looked like warmed over hell. “We won’t have a final minimum number of individuals until we do the lab work. That’s why Dale called me down from McMaster University in Ontario. I teach there. Dale wanted me to do the osteological analysis on the children.”
“Dr. Cole is one of the finest in the discipline,” Sid added from the side. “I don’t think Dale would have trusted anyone else with a bone bed.”
“And these burned children? That’s been reported to the authorities?”
“Prehistoric,” Dusty said. “It’s an archaeological site. They burned in A.D. 1263. Someone torched the kiva.” He gave Nichols a dull gaze. “Human beings were no different then than now.” His eyes turned to Sid Malroun.
Sid said, “Don’t look here for a rebuttal. Forensic anthropologists as a rule tend to have skewed perceptions about human beings. It’s not like we get to see the better angels of human nature.”
“Would this Alevy character have any reason to kill Dr. Robertson?”
“No,” Dusty said absently. “He’s Jewish. A Holocaust survivor. His goal is to preserve sites where atrocities
took place. As reminders about just how close the beast is in all of us.”
“I’ll be checking him out. Now, let’s get back to this witchcraft.” Nichols studied Dusty through his good eye. “Do you have any idea who this witch might be?”
Dusty took a deep breath and shook his head. “No. The only run-in Dale ever had with witches was long ago. God, what, almost twenty-five years now. I was just a kid. Dale had heard that a bunch of witches were holding ceremonies in a cave in Tsegi Canyon. You couldn’t get there by car so we borrowed horses from an old Navajo friend of ours.”
Dusty frowned, looking back into the past. “We had to ride for nearly a day to even get close to the place. When we did, Dale made me hold the horses down in a piñon grove in a little cove at the bottom of the canyon while he hiked up.”
“Did he see witches?” Nichols asked, as though ready to get up and leave if Dusty said yes.
Dusty nodded. “He said that he climbed up to where he could see into this hollow in the sandstone. There were three of them. One of them wore a wolf mask. They had a big fire so Dale could see the inside of the cave pretty well. The thing that caught his attention was the sand painting on the floor.”
“Sand painting?” Nichols asked. “That’s Navajo, isn’t it?”
Dusty shrugged. “Hopi, Zuni, and the rest of the Pueblo peoples have made pictures for thousands of years. But, yeah, I suppose that in this case it was more of a Navajo utilization. Dale told me that they’d drawn a picture of a white man. He was sure it was him. That scared him, and he started back down the hill. He saw the Wolf Witch shoot an arrow into the picture’s knee, and Dale’s knee gave out. Then the witch shot the painting’s other knee, and Dale went tumbling down the slope.
“He didn’t reach where I was until well after midnight.
By then I was cold, scared, and more than ready to get the hell out of there. Dale was, too. We rode all night. Really pushed those poor bone-rack ponies. Dale’s knees were never right after that.”
“What about you?” Nichols asked. “You were there. Do you believe that Dr. Robertson saw witches?”
Dusty studied him, not really giving a damn, and asked, “How long have you been in this part of the country, Agent Nichols?”
“Look,” he said simply, “we handle law enforcement on the reservations. It doesn’t matter what I believe or don’t believe. I’ve been here long enough, talked to enough tribal police, to know that witchcraft is something that other people take seriously. I just want to know about you, what you believe.”
“Then, yes, I think Dale saw witches up there, and it’s entirely possible that one of them lured him out to Chaco Canyon and murdered him.” He could see Bill Hendersen squirming uncomfortably, and added, “It’s not what you believe that counts. The Wolf Witch, or someone like him, killed Dale, and tried to suck his soul out of his head.”
Nichols gave Dusty a deadpan look. “You know, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m from Baltimore. I liked Baltimore. Someday, I want to go back, so I can work on crimes that make sense. You know, mob violence, international drug murders, good old-fashioned crimes of passion. That’s my kind of thing. I
really
don’t appreciate this witchcraft bullshit. Now, your turn. Tell me the truth. You honestly believe that’s why the murderer drilled a hole in his head? To suck his soul out?”
Dusty could tell from Nichols’s disgusted expression that he didn’t really want to hear what Dusty thought, but Dusty was going to tell him anyway. “I do. It’s part of the Native folklore here. The yucca hoop that was around the body? That’s more folklore. Witches change shape by jumping through hoops twisted out of yucca.”
“So, they expected Robertson to do what? Jump through the hoop and change shape?”
Nichols’s tone was almost belligerent. Dusty leaned forward in his chair about to say something he’d regret when he was saved by a knock at the door.
A white-coated lab technician stuck her head in. She was young, perhaps twenty-five, with short blond hair. “Dr. Malroun? The results are in on the tissue inside Dr. Robertson’s mouth. It tested positive for human. Blood type O.”
“Dale was AB positive,” Dusty said. “As I’m sure you already know.”
Maureen’s shoulders slumped, and Dusty reached out for her hand. The bones of her fingers felt thin and frail in his grip. He held them tightly.
Nichols took a deep breath. “What about the little stone fetish?”
“El basilisco,
” Dusty said, and suddenly gaped, as understanding dawned. A prickling like a thousand chills ran up and down his spine. He lurched to his feet.
“What?” Nichols asked.
“The card. The card under the wiper. Dear God, he was there this afternoon … watching us! He walked right up to the Bronco while we were inside!”
“Who did?”
“Dale’s killer. The witch!” Dusty pulled the card from his shirt pocket and handed it to Nichols.
 
 
CATKIN UNFOLDED HER war shirt and checked the sun-bleached fabric. Woven from Hohokam cotton, it had been red once, many sun cycles ago, but the color had faded to the palest of pinks. The material was light and more suited for summer wear, but it had
no holes in it. She refolded it and stuffed it into the bottom of her pack. She placed a pair of buffalo-hide moccasins on top of it. She had traded a turquoise-inlaid comb to one of the Sunrise Town Traders for them. Next she packed small sacks of cornmeal and finally a supply of venison jerky.
She pulled two copper bells out and held them. She hadn’t approved of taking the bells, and just having them set her teeth on edge. This was plunder taken from the graves of the First People. On the one hand, it was, and remained, property of the dead. On the other hand, her people needed them as trade goods far more than the dead did.
Her mind went back to that night outside Aspen village. She remembered finding the first of the copper bells wedged into a slit in a desiccated mummy’s belly. She had remained at the trailhead while Browser went down to check the silent village. Shadow Woman had lured him into a kiva and trapped him there among the corpses of her victims, leading him like a bird with crumbs, but her bait had been these little copper bells.
Catkin tucked them away and lifted her fingertips to her nose, smelling the faint metallic odor. So much of her life had been touched by the First People, their places, and things. The Katsinas’ People’s troubles began when Browser found a little turquoise wolf on the spot where his lover, Hophorn, had been attacked. Since then, they had stumbled from one disaster to another.
Browser still had that wolf. Legends said it was a Spirit Helper made by the First People. With the wolf as a guide, the soul of the dead could navigate the trails, traps, and tangles of the roads in the underworlds. The wolf would lead them past the monsters that guarded the way, take them past the dead ends where a soul could end up lost and howling through eternity. For the wicked, the wolf was essential, for it would ensure that he took the right fork in the trail and
avoided Spider Woman’s judgment. That was the problem with the First People. They were tainted by a Power gone wrong.
She took her stack of died corn cakes and placed them on the top of the pack before pulling the drawstrings tight. She hefted it, feeling the weight. Not too bad. On the sleeping mat lay her blanket made of split turkey feathers, her bow and quiver of arrows, and her war club. That was the sum of her worldly possessions.
“Catkin?” a soft voice called from the doorway.
Catkin turned, her hand instinctively reaching for her war club. “What is it?”
Obsidian ducked past the door hanging, her long black hair glistening, freshly washed in yucca root soap. The odor still clung to her. She wore a wealth of turquoise necklaces that hung over the exposed tops of her full breasts. A long fur cloak draped her shoulders; it had been fashioned from hide cut into strips and twisted so that the fur stuck out inside as well as outside.
“What do you want?” Catkin turned back to her pack. “I have things to do.”
“You are leaving?”
“We all are. Tomorrow. The Matron is taking us south. Away from here.”
“To Streambed Town.” Obsidian’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “I know.”
Obsidian’s eyes seemed to enlarge. She stepped closer to Catkin. What was it that men saw in her? Why did they lose themselves in that depthless stare? When Catkin looked into those eyes, she saw something feral and dangerous.
Which reminded her of how they had looked in the Sunrise great kiva that morning. “Tell me, Obsidian, what’s between you and Old Pigeontail?”
“Between us?” Obsidian’s manner changed yet again, this time to one of pensive speculation.
“I saw you in the kiva. You looked like he was about
to reach out and grab your breath-heart soul right out of your body.”
“Oh, that.” Obsidian smiled warily. “I owe him for some items he traded me. It’s just a debt that I squared with him.”
“Uh-huh.”
Lying camp bitch.
“Sure. Just a debt. What are you doing here?”
Obsidian’s voice softened. “I want to go with you.”
Catkin stared at her.
“You and the War Chief aren’t going with Matron Cloudblower to Streambed Town, are you?” Obsidian tilted her head, and the faintest frown etched her forehead. “Let me go with you.”

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