Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (20 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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She decided she liked Rupert Brown. “Dusty says you want to dig the site where Dale was found.”
“Yes. I think it’s essential.” He gave her a careful inspection, as though weighing her reaction to his words. “Witches live by two means. First, they terrify
people so badly that no one will dare take action against them. That worked especially well in the old days. Second, they survive by misdirection and subterfuge.”
“Do you believe in witchcraft?”
“I believe it works,” Brown said. “So did Dale. Oh, I know all the studies. Classic works by people like Clyde Kluckhohn, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and others. Walter Cannon even gave us a nice, tidy physiological explanation of how people die from having a spell cast on them. But none of that matters. What matters is that people die.”
“You think that’s what happened to Dale?”
He watched Dusty shaking hands with somber well-wishers. “I think Dale met a witch out there, and I don’t think the witch buried him in that site by accident. I want to know why.”
A brown-skinned man in a gray cowboy hat walked up to Dusty and hugged him. The two patted each other on the back like old friends.
“My son, Lupe,” Rupert said. “He and Dusty grew up together. They were also initiated into a kiva together.” He smiled crookedly. “You’d be shocked by the amount of trouble they managed to get into.”
“Knowing Dusty, I doubt it.” She watched as a younger man with long shining black hair followed Lupe to shake Dusty’s hand. He looked to be in his early twenties, tall and muscular. Very good-looking.
“My grandson, Reggie,” Rupert said, and his smile turned wry. “You’d be shocked by the amount of trouble he’s currently in.”
She glanced up. “Do all of your offspring get into trouble?”
“It seems to run in the family,” Rupert said. “Lupe has pretty much straightened himself out. Reggie, on the other hand, God, I don’t know what to do with him. He’s got so much potential. He’s a wizard with a computer. I can’t even find my toothbrush in the morning
and he can find anything in cyberspace.” Rupert’s face softened. “But he just can’t seem to find his way.”
Maureen watched as Reggie walked down and stood by Maggie. He seemed to be trying to comfort her. Maggie was listening to him with wide eyes, and nodding.
Behind them, Maureen noticed a woman wearing a black fur hat and dark glasses. Classy. The wind whipped her long black wool coat around black suede boots. She had her arms wrapped around her—probably for warmth—but it looked like she was hugging herself. She stood apart, and Maureen was positive she hadn’t been present earlier.
The woman bent down and ran her fingers through the gray streak of ash still visible on the ground. Her face twisted, as though struggling against tears. Then, abruptly, she rose and walked briskly away.
“You said the witch was a ‘he.’ What makes you think so?” Maureen asked.
“In this part of the world, most witches are,” Brown replied, and his gaze followed Maureen’s to the woman striding for the parking lot. “But, on the other hand,” he added, “maybe that’s just what we’re supposed to think.”
 
 
“LET US TALK of the death of nations,” old White Cone said as the fire crackled and spat. Yellow light illuminated the ring of faces.
They had camped in a dry creek bed spotted with junipers. Fortune had smiled on them that day. As they
paralleled the Great North Road, they had stumbled on a pack of coyotes bringing down an old antelope doe. Not even the crafty coyotes could keep a kill from human predators. The smell of roasting meat added a nearly festive atmosphere to their dry camp.
The death of nations?
Browser studied the faces around the fire. What an improbable party. Eight Mogollon warriors, Jackrabbit and Straighthorn, the beautiful Obsidian, and the two elders. Catkin had taken first watch, positioning herself above them on an eroded clay formation that poked up from the desert like a sharpened nipple.
“To what do you refer?” Stone Ghost asked. He picked strips of steaming brown meat from the section of vertebra he’d been given and popped them into his mouth. The most tender meat had been given to the elders. It made it easier on their toothless jaws.
White Cone smiled as he licked greasy fingers and motioned around. “Don’t you wonder? How could the Straight Path Nation have fallen? Look about you. Each of these pinnacles once was topped with a fortification. Just over there, to the east, on the Great North Road, was a signal tower. Charcoal still runs down its sides when the rains come. Charcoal from the great signal fires that tied Straight Path Canyon to its northern holdings. The Blessed Sun controlled the whole world, sending out his red-shirted warriors to enforce the slightest of his whims. How could such a powerful nation fall?”
Browser’s gut twisted. He had heard the stories. All of them blamed his great-great-great-grandmother, Night Sun, because she had given birth to a child by her War Chief, Ironwood. Browser had always accepted the account as just another legend. But after discovering he was descended from the First People, after having
seen
the mummified body of Night Sun, and heard the story of how the White Moccasins had tortured her to death, he believed the stories.
“It was the Matron, Night Sun,” Jackrabbit interjected through a mouthful of meat. “She betrayed the Straight Path Nation.”
Browser winced, and hoped that no one noticed. Obsidian, too, had stiffened.
“You are wrong, my young friend.” White Cone carefully wiped grease from his wrinkled brown fingers. “It was betrayal, yes. But not on the part of Matron Night Sun.”
“Then, who?” Obsidian demanded to know. Her beautiful face gleamed in the firelight.
“Ah, that is the story I would tell.” The old Mogollon smiled. “Some would say it was the coming of the thlatsinas who wrought the destruction of the First People and the Straight Path Nation, but that is not so.”
“No?” Obsidian’s dark eyes flashed.
“No, it was the passions of a single man,” White Cone continued, “that brought down the First People.”
“Which man?” Obsidian demanded.
White Cone fingered his wrinkled chin. “The Straight Path Nation was destroyed by the Blessed Sun. Have you ever heard that?”
“You mean Crow Beard?” Obsidian cocked her head.
“No, though he played a most important role. It was Night Sun’s boy: the Blessed Snake Head. He was the dry rot that caused the collapse of the Straight Path Nation. He was a witch and his evil had eaten into the fiber of their world. He was killed by the warrior, Cone, whom he had betrayed. They buried Snake Head in Talon Town, in a sealed room, with a rock over his head.”
Stone Ghost cocked his white head and his eyes gleamed in the firelight. “How do you, of all people, know this?”
White Cone waved a finger back and forth. “There are always two faces to betrayal. The great Jay Bird, the mightiest of all the Mogollon chiefs, was the other
face of evil. When Crow Beard died, Night Sun’s boy, Snake Head, became the Blessed Sun. Under his command was a warrior named Cone. Cone carried messages between Jay Bird and Snake Head.”
“Snake Head,” Stone Ghost said, eyes unfocused. “I remember hearing that he was buried as a witch. That the Blessed Featherstone became the Matron.” He frowned. “It is said that she had the habit of losing her breath-heart soul. When she did, she babbled incoherently.”
“Yes. That’s right. It was at one of those times that she ordered the abandonment of Straight Path Canyon.” White Cone studied Browser thoughtfully. “Oh, we heard the stories firsthand. Not only did we have spies everywhere, but many of our people, who’d been kept as slaves, escaped in the aftermath. At the time we thought it was victory; we had no way of knowing it was change. Change for all of us. We had no way to know that by attacking Talon Town we would be the instruments of Poor Singer’s vision.”
“You mean Jay Bird shouldn’t have raided Talon Town?” Browser asked; it had been the single most devastating blow to the Straight Path Nation. That act had broken the First People’s power in a way that no uprising, drought, or natural calamity could. Within one sun cycle, the canyon had been abandoned, and the Made People had begun a war against the First People. The First People had but a few sun cycles to survive.
“Of course we should have!” White Cone grinned like a stealthy fox. “They were our enemies. We fought constantly. They took our people as slaves and forced us to build their Great Houses, to cut and carry huge stones for their kivas. They forced us to worship them and their ascent from the underworlds, when we knew our ancestors came from the heavens; they were fiery wolves made from gouts of Father Sun’s fire!”
“Then why do you care about Poor Singer’s vision?” Stone Ghost asked.
The old Mogollon leaned back, a look of satisfaction on his wrinkled face. “No matter what the origins of your people or mine, the thlatsinas came to both of us. They may have given their vision to Sternlight first, but Poor Singer, a man born of Mogollon blood—a joining of the Blessed Sun, Crow Beard, and Young Fawn—brought it to us. When even Jay Bird refused to believe, Poor Singer raised his hands and the earth shook. Rocks tumbled, buildings fell, and for the second time in one hundred sun cycles, the Rainbow Serpent rose into the sky where the earth had been breached.” He arched an ancient eyebrow. “How could we ignore such a powerful Dreamer?”
“Elder,” Browser quietly asked. “Do you know what message your prophet carried? Someone killed him to keep him from telling us. If you know—”
“He went to Flowing Waters Town to save the world.” White Cone looked sadly down at his hands. The greasy skin shone in the firelight. “To do that, he knew he had to die.”
“He knew?” Stone Ghost straightened.
The old man looked suddenly tired. “Do you think Blue Corn and her allies are alone? There are doubters among the Mogollon, too. I, myself, have fought against the coming of the thlatsinas. I was a priest, you see. I Sang the planting ceremonies, and danced the part of the Blessed Flute Player when I was a youth. When our young prophet came down from the mountains, he was a changed man. A shy boy had climbed the heights, but a strong man descended.”
Murmurs of assent eddied among the Mogollon warriors.
“I remember that night,” White Cone said reverently. “My kiva—we were in ritual council—was performing the Sacred Rites of the Bow. The young prophet climbed down the ladder into the midst of our most secret ritual, and there, I swear, he stood in the sacred fire, his flesh untouched, and said, ‘The thlatsinas have
shown me the way.’ He pointed right at me. ‘You are the one who must go with me. You, who have never believed in Poor Singer’s prophecy. You must be my witness.’”
“Witness to what?” Obsidian asked, clearly taken in by the old man’s hollow-eyed stare as he watched the fire.
“To his death,” the elder said calmly. “The prophet told us that night that in order to save the world, he must die. That upon his death, his soul would rise to the night sky and when the sun rose the next morning, he would be among the thlatsinas. He told us that we would know him when he came to our villages, because he would have a single buffalo horn growing out of the side of his head.”
Browser glared down into his teacup. Nothing good had ever come from believing in visions and gods. He wasn’t about to start.
Obsidian pushed long black hair over her shoulder and said, “Then how do we know that he didn’t plan his own murder? He might have hired someone to kill him to prove his vision. Or you, White Cone, might have murdered him to prove it.”
Browser pulled himself upright as the Mogollon warriors shot hard glances her way, but White Cone waved them down, and said, “The young warrior who was killed was a member of my kiva, an initiate of the Bow. You people are outsiders. You do not understand the Bow Society. It is—”
“The most sacred of all Fire Dog societies,” Browser said. “I know of your kiva, and have great admiration for it. Your warriors offer their lives in exchange for the safety of the people. They stand to the last, no matter the cost. When you give your word, you will not break it.”
White Cone eyed Browser with more respect. “We are all made upon the Bow, War Chief. We gave our
sacred vow that our prophet would die only after all of us had been killed. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Stone Ghost said, reaching his hands out to the warmth of the fire. “You meant to prove him wrong.”
White Cone nodded. “I did not believe his vision.”
“What else did he tell you?”
White Cone’s old face turned somber. “He told us how he would die, and that all but two of us would live. He told us they would bury him in the Kiva of the Worlds, and said it would sanctify that place for the thlatsinas.”
Obsidian’s full lips pulled into a thin white line. “But only one other Fire Dog died. His vision was wrong.”
The wrinkles around White Cone’s mouth cut deeper as he frowned. “Only one of us has died so far, Obsidian.”
She tipped her head and the jewels in her hair sparkled. “Is that all?”
White Cone rubbed his temples, as though an ache had started behind his eyes. “No, our prophet also told us to attach ourselves to the man who had spoken for us.” He looked up. “You, War Chief Browser. The prophet said that if we did all of these things, that his purpose on earth would be fulfilled, and that, though it would take many sun cycles, the thlatsinas would win this terrible war.”
“Then,” Stone Ghost said, and deep sadness filled his voice, “your prophet knew he would never give us the message he carried.”
Browser shook his head, as though to rid himself of a buzzing fly. “Uncle, do you really believe this? Why would he come to us if he knew he would never deliver his message?”
White Cone gazed up at him with haunted eyes. “When I left my home, it was with the certainty that I would return vindicated in my beliefs, and escorting a chastened young ‘prophet.’ He would be a broken man,
mocked by Blue Corn and her warriors. But it happened exactly as he said it would. I—I could not keep him safe.”
“I still don’t understand,” Browser said. “You knew he was at risk and only placed two guards at his door?”
White Cone stared unhappily into the fire. “It was a long run up from the south, War Chief. The first night I placed five guards. My warriors were weaving on their feet. When nothing happened, when no threat materialized, I cut the number. If we rotated in twos, being that close to his room, surely we could tumble out—as you saw the other morning—in time to fight off any attack or threat to his person.”
“I might have made the same decision.” Browser cradled his chin thoughtfully. “Without knowing the future, you give warriors any chance to rest.”
“It was as the thlatsinas ordained,” White Cone said humbly. “A mistake I will never make again.”
“So,” Obsidian said disdainfully, “you now believe in the katsinas?”
“I believe,” White Cone said with a reverent nod. “What surprises me is that so many of your own Katsinas’ People do not.” He turned to look accusingly at Browser.
Browser’s thick black brows drew together. “I am just a warrior, Elder. I fight for my people. That is all. The ways and wills of gods are beyond me. And I am glad—”
“Browser?” Catkin’s voice called from the night.
At the tension in her voice, he turned, cursing himself for having night-blinded himself with the fire. “Catkin? What’s wrong?”
She walked in from the darkness, half off balance, and then Browser saw why. She tugged a filthy little girl by the hand.
“There is no alarm,” Catkin called. “I found a child out there in the dark.”
Obsidian rose from the fire and shielded her eyes, trying to see the child’s face.
“A child?” White Cone asked. “So far from the road?”
Stone Ghost’s eyes were on Obsidian as she walked away from camp, but he said, “There are many orphans these days, White Cone, children whose villages have been destroyed, their families killed.”
Browser peered curiously at the child. Her long black hair was a mass of tangles. Her parents must have been killed days ago. “Straighthorn. Take Catkin’s place on guard.”

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