Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (36 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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“You still wanted your career.”
“Which I wasn’t about to find in a Laundromat in Gallup.”
“Did Dale and you … I mean, you and Dale were lovers long before you met Samuel. What happened there?”
Ruth Ann cocked her head slightly, trying to read Maureen’s reaction. “Have you ever been tied up in a love triangle?”
“Once, a long, long time ago in high school. It wasn’t pleasant.”
“It’s less so when your husband and old lover are best friends. Sam and Dale liked each other in spite of my incendiary presence. Dale might have been the biggest mistake I ever made.”
“How is that?”
She smiled at something in the distant past. “He didn’t write it in his journals?”
“If he did, we didn’t get to it before the thief ripped them off.”
She fingered the tabletop. “Dale never married. For that I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I did that to him.” She ran a manicured hand through her silver hair. “Oh, I knew it would break his heart when I showed up with Samuel. I wanted it over with. Samuel was new, exciting, and, I thought, brave. He’d just walked out on a fortune, told his family to go fuck off, that he was going to be a field archaeologist, and they could take their mansion and money and suck eggs.”
“So you left Dale?”
“Dale was getting too close.” Ruth Ann looked up. “He was a possessive kind of person. Even in his old age. You knew him. A dominant male. When you worked with Dale, there was never any doubt who was in control. Yes, he was a team leader, and always took your input and made it part of the project final report. He wanted your best effort and rewarded you appropriately
to the quantity and quality of your work. But he was the boss. Period.”
“I think that’s what made him one of the greatest anthropologists of the twentieth century,” Maureen stated bluntly.
“No doubt that’s an accurate assessment. As a lover, however, an independent and self-possessed woman looks for something a bit more egalitarian.” Ruth Ann tugged at her red scarf again. “You never had an affair with Dale, I take it?”
Maureen just stared at her.
“Don’t looked so shocked that I’d ask. Dale had affairs with lots of women,” Ruth Ann continued thoughtfully. “He liked smart, strong, and independent women. He couldn’t stand the others, the golden girls we referred to earlier. He called them ‘breeding stock’ for the species. Absolutely necessary, but not worth his time. So he was always caught on the horns of a dilemma. He wasn’t attracted to women who didn’t challenge him intellectually, but he always had to have them in an inferior position.”
“And as soon as they subordinated themselves,” she finished, “Dale lost interest?”
“Yes. Curious, isn’t it? Dale knew it, too. Hell, I told him over and over. He just couldn’t accept a woman as an equal. Or a man, either.”
“Well,” Maureen said, and looked down into her coffee cup, “at least in that regard, Dale was an egalitarian.”
Ruth Ann shook her head. “What is it about men, always trying to make women into something they’re not?”
“So you thought Samuel would be a way of shutting Dale down. Using one man to handle another? Risky. Especially when you end up married.”
“And pregnant. That was the biggest mistake of all.”
“But one you could correct, eh? You just attached yourself to a man with a plane ticket to London.”
Maureen watched the angry red rising in Ruth Ann’s cheeks. After several seconds, Maureen added, “It’s kind of like stepping-stones to avoid getting wet in the river of responsibility, isn’t it? Dale, Samuel, Carter, and Dusty, all left behind on the grander road to fame.”
“You should know. You’re famous in your field. I wager there were a number of stepping-stones in your life as well.”
Maureen picked up her coffee and drank. The sun had warmed the yellow cup, and it felt good against her chilly fingers. “What drew you back here, Dr. Sullivan? You and Carter are the only two left from those times. It’s up to you to break this thing open.”
“What makes you think it’s just us? God, Cole, there were others, too. You don’t think we just lived in a vacuum, do you?”
Maureen’s fingers tightened around her cup. Nonchalantly, she asked, “What others?”
“Colleagues from that time and place. How should I know? I never kept track. I wanted to forget that part of my life.” She lifted a mocking eyebrow. “It might even be my son, for all you know. How did he feel to learn that his adopted father and mentor, the noble Dale Emerson Robertson, had fucked his mother long before his father did? Dale never told him, did he? Surprise me and tell me I’m wrong, that Dale could actually have admitted it to the boy.”
“Dusty didn’t kill Dale. He was with me.”
“Ah, yes, your platonic relationship crops up again.” She reorganized the silverware with her long fingers. “Tell me, Doctor, what is it like to be so morally superior that you can’t allow yourself to be a woman in the presence of the man who loves you? Or is William his father’s son? Afraid to lay a finger on the woman he’s in love with?”
She stood and threw a couple of dollars onto the table. “If he ever tries, let me know if he’s as impotent as his father was.”
Ruth Ann strode purposefully to the low stairs that led down into the Loretto gardens.
Maureen turned back to her yellow coffee cup. In the back of her mind, a voice kept whispering, “
Him and his witch, him and his witch …”
 
 
BROWSER TOSSED IN his sleep, desperate to understand what his dead son was trying to tell him. Grass Moon had come to him right after he’d fallen asleep at dawn, and kept waking him throughout the morning. But Browser couldn’t hear the little boy. Each time Grass Moon opened his mouth to speak, he broke into violent coughs that ended with blood on his lips.
“Try again, son,” Browser pleaded, seeing the fear in Grass Moon’s eyes.
The little boy took a breath and tried to form words, but blood sprayed from his mouth, speckling the soil at his feet. Grass Moon reached out to touch Browser, and gasped,
“owl …”
Browser jerked awake and in the sunlight percolating down through the rifts in the roof, he saw Catkin lying on her belly beside him. He had his arm across her shoulders. Her beautiful oval face and turned-up nose gleamed golden.
Browser inhaled and the scents of moldering wood and dust filled his lungs.
When they had crawled into their blankets, exhausted from the night’s activity, they’d been an arm’s length apart. When had he curled against her?
He closed his eyes for a moment and let himself
enjoy the yucca soap fragrance of her straight black hair, then dared to press closer. As the curves of her body conformed to his, she stirred, but didn’t wake. A soft contented murmur came from her lips.
Browser savored the feel of her, the angles of her shoulders against his muscular chest, her round bottom pressed firmly against his groin. The hardening of his penis sent an insistent tingle through his loins. He couldn’t help himself as he tightened his hold on her.
He knew the moment she woke, felt her move, but not away, no, closer, pressing against him. Browser tensed as she reached back, slid her hand under his blanket, and grasped him.
Catkin opened her eyes and a soft smile turned her lips.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.
“It was a pleasant way to wake up, Browser. But why are you awake? We’ve slept barely five hands of time.”
“I had a strange dream. My son, Grass Moon, came to me. He was trying to tell me something, but I only understood one word, ‘owl.’”
Catkin released him, and her smile drained away. “Owl House?”
“Maybe. I …,” he started, and heard the faint grating of a leather-clad foot on the floor in the next chamber.
By the time Yucca Whip ducked into their doorway, they were separated, a respectable space between them.
“Yes?” Browser asked, trying to still his rapid breathing.
“Someone is coming, War Chief. We thought you should know.”
“Who?”
“One man and two dogs.”
“Carved Splinter?”
“No. An old man.”
Browser threw back his blanket and reached for his
weapons. Thankfully his war shirt hung loosely as he rose. By the time he followed Yucca Whip through the labyrinth of passageways, his ardor had faded to a pleasant memory. Catkin followed quietly behind him, displaying no evidence of the precipice upon which they had just balanced.
Yucca Whip led them up several ladders to the third floor. There, in the doorway, Fire Lark peered out at the midday sunlight.
“Where is he?” Yucca Whip asked.
“He just vanished from view. Down there.” Fire Lark pointed to the southeastern wall. “His dogs went with him. I assume he’s … there.”
Browser watched as a man clambered up over the southern room block that restricted access to the plaza. He was old, white-haired, and brown-skinned, but limber and active. The two dogs, one black the other brown, sniffed around at the open doorways as they jumped down from the crumbled walls. The man proceeded to the pilastered front of the building and disappeared out of Browser’s sight under the wall.
“Come on,” Browser said. “I know the bottom floor. We can trap him inside.”
“Perhaps we should avoid him?” Catkin asked.
“If he lives here, he may have information about Two Hearts. If he’s just innocently passing through, we may have to take other measures. Or perhaps he is bringing us information about Carved Splinter. Regardless, we must know who he is and why he’s here.”
Browser led the way back through two rooms to a ladder that poked out of a roof opening. Taking the rungs one at a time, he dropped down into the blackness of Kettle Town. He stayed close to the outside wall, where enough light filtered in to illuminate his passage.
Behind him, Catkin, Yucca Whip, and Fire Lark followed on silent feet. The dilapidated warren that was Kettle Town had survived the sun cycles better than
Talon Town. Perhaps because less fighting had taken place here. Or, maybe the builders who erected the giant town had taken more care in its construction. While the upper floor had collapsed, the spectacular destruction that made travel through Talon Town a risk to life and limb didn’t yet apply to Kettle Town.
Browser gestured silence as he crept across a room and hunched over a ladder leading down to the second floor. After listening a time, he climbed down and led his party through three rooms. Again, he stopped and perched over a ladder that led into the room block below.
A low growl came from beneath and Browser made a gesture of futility. He had misjudged the air currents that wafted through the huge town. This one carried the scent down.
“Who’s there?” a voice called.
Browser made a quick gesture, sending Catkin and Yucca Whip back the way they had come. He waited for a moment and said calmly, “You are now surrounded. My warriors have gone to block the exits. Who are you and what do you want here?”
“Browser? Is that you?” Steps grated on sand. “It’s Old Pigeontail.”
Pigeontail? The Trader? What was he doing here? Browser chewed his lip, glancing at Fire Lark, who shrugged in return. Pigeontail was known to practically everyone. For sixty sun cycles he had run the roads, trading from one end of the world to the other. Most people considered him to be a scoundrel. He charged scandalous prices for his goods.
“Where are you?” Pigeontail called up. “I’m alone, but for my dogs.”
“I know you’re alone. I watched you come in.”
“Then why didn’t you hail me, War Chief?”
In the gloom Browser could see him, a thin old man with a wrinkled face, his white hair pinned in a bun. He wore what looked like a brown tunic, and carried
a pack on his back. Both of the dogs growled.
“Calm your dogs,” Browser said. “I heard they almost ripped old Lizard Bone’s leg off up in Northern House.”
“He shouldn’t have been teasing them. Anyone who teases a Trader’s dogs gets what he deserves.” Pigeontail swung his pack off his back and rested it on the floor. To the dogs, he said, “Lie down and guard.”
Both dogs immediately lay down on either side of the pack. Pigeontail’s bony brown hands grasped the polished ladder, and he climbed toward Browser.
Browser backed away to allow the old man to climb into the room.
With his strange light brown eyes, Pigeontail studied Fire Lark. “So, it’s true. You’ve take up with the Fire Dogs.”
“Circumstance and prophecy, it would seem, have made us allies,” Browser said.
Pigeontail scanned the ruined chamber. “Did you know that you’re surrounded here?”
Browser nodded. “I know that Blue Corn is on top at Center Place, and the White Moccasins are at High Sun House. Do you know where my warrior is? The one who was taken last night?”
Pigeontail heaved a tired breath. “I imagine that he’s dead by now.” A pause. “Shadow got him last night, oh, it must have been a hand of time after you checked my room in War Club village.”
“That was you?” Browser’s eyes narrowed. “The man I checked on didn’t wake.”
Pigeontail smiled warily. “That’s because his dogs alerted him the moment you stepped out onto the roof. He told them to be quiet while he feigned deep sleep. Had you been foolish enough to come creeping down my ladder, I would have brained you from behind, and while the dogs savaged your fallen body, I’d have dealt with the second fool to come down that ladder.”
“Why are you here, in the canyon?”
“I’m on my way south, War Chief.” He glanced at Fire Lark and smiled. “You’d be amazed at the wealth of turquoise, jet, and shell beads I traded for in Flowing Waters Town. I even have copper bells, but you’d know a lot more about where they came from than I would.” The old man went silent and looked around the room again. “War Chief, is there somewhere more pleasant for us to talk than here in this wrecked room?”
Low growls came from below.
“Your warriors?” Pigeontail asked. “The ones sent to cut me off?”
“Catkin?” Browser called. “We’re up here. It’s Old Pigeontail. He says he wants to talk.”
“The dogs won’t bother you, Deputy Catkin,” Pigeontail called down. “So long as you step wide around the pack.”
Within moments Catkin and Yucca Whip climbed into the chamber. Catkin shot glances up and down Pigeontail’s lean body.
“I don’t suppose there’s a stew on?” Pigeontail asked.
“We’re a little short on rations,” Browser answered.
“Then you’re in luck.” Pigeontail fingered his chin. “I just might have a jar filled with cornmeal. Excellent stuff, milled on Matron Blue Corn’s mealing bins by practiced young maidens. It’s even spiced with beeweed.”
“Are we to be your guests?” Catkin asked, cocking her head suspiciously.
“No, but I might be induced to trade.” Pigeontail grinned. “It’s the times, you see. So many of these bits and pieces of the First People’s wealth are floating around. A jar of cornmeal for perhaps a couple of those turquoise frogs? No? Well then, maybe one of those jet bracelets?”
Browser replied, “We’re a war party, not a trading company, but we’ll see what we can come up with to barter for dinner.”
“Any news of Carved Splinter?” Catkin asked Browser.
Browser’s gut knotted at the anxious look in Catkin’s eyes. “Pigeontail says that Shadow has him.”
Her jaw hardened. She could well guess the terrors that had befallen the young warrior. “Is there a chance he’s still alive?”
“If he is,” Pigeontail said emphatically, “he’s in the bottom of the deepest kiva in High Sun House, surrounded by White Moccasins. And you have a reputation for not leaving people behind, War Chief.” He shot a meaningful look at Catkin. “So I’m sure the White Moccasins are expecting you.”
Pigeontail studied the Fire Dogs again, evaluating, before he continued, “With enough brave warriors, you might fight your way in there, War Chief, but I can promise you, you won’t fight your way out.”
 
 
STONE GHOST EASED up to the door and leaned against the plastered wall to listen. He’d seen Straighthorn enter the chamber fifty heartbeats ago. The scent of pack rat urine burned his nose. He looked up and saw sticky streaks of it flowing down the wall to his left.
“I don’t know,” Bone Walker said.
Straighthorn’s voice had gone low and threatening. “If you know something, you’d better tell me. Right now. That was you, wasn’t it? In the rock shelter with Redcrop?”
Feet shuffled and Stone Ghost heard Bone Walker sucking on her lip.
“Do you remember Redcrop?” Straighthorn asked with an ache in his voice.
Redcrop had been killed by White Moccasins right
after the kiva fire in Longtail village. Straighthorn had loved her very much.
Straighthorn said, “Redcrop. She was the girl who was tied up with you in the rock shelter near Longtail village. Do you remember her?”
Bone Walker made a high-pitched sound, as though straining to get away from a hard hand.
Straighthorn heaved an angry sigh and said, “I’m sorry. Maybe you aren’t the same girl. Maybe I just want you to be so that I can drive a stiletto through your heart the way the White Moccasins did Redcrop’s heart.”
Bone Walker’s voice was a tiny tremor: “
My heart
?
You want my heart
?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s just that I—”
In a choking sob, Bone Walker said, “If you kill my heart I won’t be able to look inside it!”
“What do you mean, look inside it?”
“I mean first. I have to look in it first.”
Stone Ghost squeezed his eyes closed and listened to the blood surge in his ears. He was growing to love this child. It would shred his souls if she—
“Do you know who Two Hearts is?” Straighthorn asked.
Bone Walker didn’t answer.
“He’s a very powerful witch. We are trying to find him so we can kill him.”
A soft suffocating sound filled the chamber, and Stone Ghost realized that Bone Walker must be crying.
“I’m going to kill him myself,” Straighthorn assured her. “With this stiletto on my belt. Do you see this?”

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