The Witch's Tongue (5 page)

Jacob Gourd Rattle’s
matukach
wife wiped a crumb off her chin, cast a hopeful glance at the Ute woman’s propane stove. “You sure do know how to make good biscuits.”

Daisy Perika had baked a second batch. She opened the oven, brought the blackened pan to the table.

“Oh, thank you!” The guest snatched the largest of the flaky pastries. “Can I have some butter?”

The old woman plodded over to the small refrigerator, returned with a plastic tub of margarine, banged it on the table beside the biscuit pan. “Is there anything else I can get for you before I sit myself down?”

“Thank you kindly, but I don’t think so. I expect this’ll hold me for a while.” Kicks pried the biscuit open, smeared a generous helping of the yellow spread into the warm interior. She tried to hide a yawn. “I don’t know why I’m so sleepy.”

Daisy seated herself across the table from the peculiar woman. “You probably didn’t get enough rest last night.” The old woman’s tone suggested that she was merely making polite conversation.

Kicks Dogs’ head bobbed in a nod. “That’s the truth. Even after I had me a little sip of my sleeping tonic—which is one part whiskey and ten parts water—”

More likely, the other way around
. Daisy’s eyes twinkled.

“—And plenty of sugar, well—what little sleep I got, I kept having these crazy dreams. One of ’em started with this weird sound. It was something like this….” She drew in a deep breath.

“Vooooom.”

Louder: “
Vooooom
”

Louder still: “
VOOOOOM!
”

The Ute shaman, whose dream was lost in the mists of her mind, squinted at the white woman.
Why does this sound familiar?

Jacob Gourd Rattle’s wife snapped off a chunk of biscuit, chewed. “Sometime later on, I dreamed I saw Jake’s legs.”

His legs?
Daisy cocked her head. “Where was the rest of him?”

Kicks Dogs looked up, as if seeing the vision again. “I guess it must’ve been up there with his legs.”

Daisy joined the narrator in gazing at the dusty plastic light fixture on the ceiling.

Kicks returned her attention to the biscuit. “He was up above me, in those smoky clouds. At first, all I could make out were his legs and his feet. Well, I couldn’t actually see his
feet—
I mean I could see Jake’s
boots
. And then after he kept on climbing, I couldn’t see anything at all.”

“Climbing?”

Kicks nodded. “That’s what it looked like.” The white woman had a vacant, dreamy look as she waved a hand over her head. “He was just sorta floating up there in the air. But I thought to myself: Jake’s visions has come true—he is actually climbing up a moonbeam!”

The Ute elder leaned closer to the storyteller. “Did you say
moonbeam?
”

“Oh, did I forget to tell you about that? Jake had been dreaming for weeks that he was in that awful, scary canyon—climbing up a moonbeam.” She finished off the biscuit, licked her fingers. “Mmmm. That was good.” She regarded the Ute woman with pity.
I hope when I get that old I don’t look like a wrinkled old toad
. “You want to hear about my other dreams?”

Apprehension was all over Daisy’s face. “There’s more?”

“Oh, sure. When I start to dreaming, it’s just one after another all night. I had this one about these rootin’-tootin’ cowboys having this knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out brawl. And then I saw King Kong fall off of the Empire State Building.” She hugged herself. “I wish I could have fun dreams like that every night of the week.”

I wish this wild-eyed
matukach
woman had knocked on somebody else’s door
.

“It all seemed so real at the time,” Kicks said. “Even the part about King Kong falling off the skyscraper.” She gnawed at her lower lip. “But when I woke up this morning at first light and saw Jake walking away from his camp, I knew it’d all been just a bunch of crazy dreams.”

The Ute elder grinned.
Either that or he shinnied back down that moonbeam
.

Kicks Dogs reached for another biscuit. “These are really scrumptious. Do you have anything sweet to smear on ’em—maybe some homemade preserves?”

Charlie Moon had not been in an SUPD unit for quite some time, and it was very pleasant, having a chauffeur. The tribal investigator spent his time watching interesting things pass by at a velocity slightly in excess of seventy miles per hour. Lots of things.

Her neck hanging over a barbed-wire fence, a fat red mare munching grass that
was
greener.

A chugging Farmall tractor, with a rusty hay rake attached.

A small pond, floating an empty rowboat.

Telephone poles.

Trees.

A roadside sign: 60
MPH
.

Officer Jim Wolfe also saw it, let up slightly on the gas.

Charlie Moon was enjoying the absence of words flitting about. He was grateful that Wolfe was apparently not one of those
matukach
who cannot bear silence. The kind who must fill up a peaceful quiet with “small talk.”

Wolfe wrinkled his brow. “What do you think—”

I shoulda known it couldn’t last
.

“—about Jacob Gourd Rattle leaving his wife out there in the canyon? And during a snowstorm!” The driver shot the tribal investigator a half-angry look.

“I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t think about it.”
Now he’ll tell me what he thinks
.

“Well, I think he left her out there to die from exposure.” Wolfe scowled at his blurry reflection in the sandblasted windshield. “He’s beat that woman half to death three or four times already.” The driver set his jaw. “This time, he must’ve figured she’d freeze to death.”

Charlie Moon calculated that it was almost an hour to his aunt’s home, and thought he would give Wolfe something to think about. If he were thinking, maybe he’d be quiet. “I can imagine five or six ways to explain what happened.”

Wolfe made a tight-lipped smile. “Okay, why did Gourd Rattle leave his wife in the canyon?”

Moon’s tone hinted at a sinister notion: “Maybe he didn’t.”

The driver waited for a few seconds, then: “You surely don’t think he’s still there.”

“In the canyon?” The tribal investigator pretended to roll this over in his mind. “For all we know, he might be.” The more improbable the theory, the better. “Try this on for size—the little woman had enough of Jacob beating her up. Sometime last night, she stopped his clock for good.”

Wolfe’s mouth fell open. “You don’t actually
believe
that.”

Moon managed to look as if he just might.

The SUPD cop shook his head. “But that don’t make any sense. If Jake is dead in the canyon, why ain’t his van still on Three Sisters Mesa where his wife parked it?”

“Maybe she never left it on the mesa.” After a pregnant pause, Moon added, “Could be she didn’t even drive it there.”

Wolfe snorted. “Then how’d she get back to the canyon—on foot?”

“That can’t be entirely ruled out.” The tribal investigator scowled, as if at an image of scandalous skullduggery. “But it’s more likely that somebody drove her there.”

“Who?”

Moon was enjoying himself immensely. “Her boyfriend.” He turned to stare at the white man, watched the muscles in Wolfe’s neck tense. “Go look it up. Nine times out of ten, when a good-looking young woman makes up her mind to kill off a husband who’s twice her age, she’s already found herself a brand-new hairy-leg to take his place. The replacement is always a good deal younger than her old man.”

Wolfe was shaking his head. “That seems pretty thin to me—”

“But mainly, she picks her new fella because he is willing to lay it all on the line to help the pretty lady dispose of her husband. Which is another way of saying that the new fella ain’t all that bright. This is why twelve times out of eleven, John Law will nail the both of ’em.”

One of the Blazer’s front tires hit the shoulder at sixty-six miles per hour, kicked up a spray of snowy slush. Jim Wolfe jerked the steering wheel, brought the vehicle back onto the blacktop.

Charlie Moon pretended not to notice.

The driver blushed pink. “This old rust bucket is a death trap. I need to get the steering checked.”

The next sixteen minutes were devoid of conversation.

Presently, Chimney Rock loomed up on the south side of the highway.

When the SUPD Blazer topped the final hill before the turnoff at Capote Lake, Wolfe hit the brakes. There was a minor traffic jam at the intersection where Route 151 stemmed off in a southwesterly direction, following the willow-studded bank of Stollsteimer Creek. Officer Wolfe groaned. “A roadblock.” His thoughts spilled out of his mouth in a mumble: “Prob’ly because of that burglary.”

The tribal investigator’s ears pricked. “Burglary?”

The white cop shrugged. “It wasn’t in SUPD jurisdiction.”

“So where was it?”

Wolfe stared straight ahead. “The Cassidy Museum was broke into last night.”

The thirty-acre Cassidy estate was near the reservation boundary. “What’d the thieves get?”

“Ah—some old coins, I think.” Wolfe scowled at the clutter of traffic. “Why didn’t dispatch alert me about the roadblock?”

Moon was eager to get back to Aunt Daisy’s trailer, say his goodbye, and aim his Expedition north toward the vast open spaces of the Columbine. “Jim, you’re a police officer, you’re on duty, and you’re driving a four-wheel-drive Blazer with snow tires. You can whip right around this traffic.”

Wolfe eyed the steep, narrow shoulder to his right and found it not entirely to his liking. “I don’t know—maybe I should have a word with the state cops before I go barging through their operation.” The SUPD officer pulled halfway off the pavement, shut off the engine, pulled on his long black raincoat, left his unit to have a powwow with a young state trooper who was working the westbound lane from Pagosa Springs.

Resigned to the delay, Moon went along for the walk. He wondered whether Danny Bignight had shown up at Daisy’s to take Kicks Dogs home. If not, Jim Wolfe could take care of that task. The Ute preferred to avoid another encounter with Jacob Gourd Rattle’s distraught wife. The memory of how he had pictured the meek little woman to Jim Wolfe as her burly husband’s murderer brought a smile to his face.

THE ENCOUNTER

HAVING FLIRTED
with a pretty blonde in a sleek red convertible, the state police officer regretfully waved the Caddy on.

“Tough duty,” Charlie Moon observed.

Lieutenant Staples turned to see the tall Ute and the uniformed SUPD officer. “Hey, guys—what brings you here? You gonna give us a hand with traffic?”

Wolfe looked embarrassed. “Uh, I was wondering if it would be okay if I drove my unit around the—”

“Just a minute. Let me get some of these good citizens on their way.” The trooper gave his attention to the next vehicle. It was not shiny, the occupant was anything but pretty—and also the wrong gender. The dark-skinned man in the 1957 Chevy pickup was trying very hard to look like he was not alarmed about being stopped. This raised the trooper’s suspicions.
Wonder what this yahoo’s hauling. Drugs, maybe
.

Wolfe and Moon waited.

Officer Staples put on a counterfeit smile, made a circular motion with his finger to indicate that the driver should lower his window.

As he cranked the window down, the man in the old pickup wondered why the Indian cops were backing up the state police. He recognized the uniformed SUPD officer as Jim Wolfe—a real tough guy, not a man to cross. The tall one was Charlie Moon, the legendary Ute cop who had gone off to be some kind of cowboy. Felix Navarone stuck his head halfway out of the window, tried to smile back at the spiffy-looking state cop. “Wassup, bro?”

Officer Staples leaned close to the pickup, caught the faint scent of whiskey on the man’s breath. He peered into the cab through shades that concealed sharp gray eyes. “Sir, may I see your driver’s license?”

Felix Navarone produced a goat-hide wallet from his hip pocket, offered it to the trooper. A twenty-dollar bill was folded under the Colorado driver’s license.

Staples lost the smile. “Sir, please remove your license from the wallet.”

“Right.” Navarone made a sickly grin, passed the plasticized card to the policeman.

A glance verified that the license was not expired, that the licensee was not required to wear optical correction, that the color photo was a good match to the anxious man behind the wheel. “Sir, please show me your vehicle registration.”

There was a blank look from the driver, then: “Oh yeah. I think I know where it is.” Navarone leaned toward the driver’s side, fumbled with the chrome button on the glove compartment. When the curved door fell onto its hinges, a pint of whiskey was exposed. It was about half full. Which made it—in a legal sense—an open container of alcohol.

Lieutenant Staples grinned.
Gotcha
. “Sir, give me the ignition key, then get out.”

Felix Navarone’s dark eyes grew large. “What?”

“Give me the ignition key and—”

The driver’s hand was moving toward his jacket pocket.

He’s going for a piece!
Staples crouched, reached for his automatic, yelled, “Put your hands where I can see them—right
now
!” His pistol had barely cleared the black canvas holster when the driver of the old pickup made a dive for the passenger side of the cab, burst through the door, hit the ground running, leaped over a ditch, sprinted across an open area toward a pine thicket.

While Charlie Moon and Jim Wolfe watched, several other state policemen abandoned their posts to help Officer Staples give chase.

Moon smiled at his good fortune to have happened on the scene just in time for the entertainment. Moreover, the tall Ute felt a wager coming on. “Jim, I’ll bet you twenty bucks he’ll make it into the piney woods and they won’t catch him…” he glanced at his wristwatch, “for at least ten minutes.”

Wolfe had no interest in the bet. “I think we should help ’em grab this guy.”

“Not a good idea,” Moon said. “For one thing, these Smokeys already got him outnumbered six to one. And for another, I have not been an SUPD cop for quite some time—my days of chasing drunks and crazies are over for good.” He clamped a firm hand on Wolfe’s shoulder. “Of course, if you want to go a-running after this knot-head, I would not try to talk you out of it. But I don’t see why you’d even consider such a thing.”

Wolfe told him why: “That fella they’re chasing is Felix Navarone—a Mescalero Apache. And I’m sure you know that all Indians arrested in these parts fall under Southern Ute PD jurisdiction.”

“I know who he is; but let these fellas cuff him.
Then
tell them he’s a ’Pache and they’ll turn him over to you for deposit in our tribal jail.” The Ute pointed with a jut of his chin. “Looks like these law dogs already got this outlaw treed like a three-legged raccoon. You should’ve taken my bet.”

Wolfe stalked off toward the cluster of state-police officers who had an isolated cottonwood.

Moon followed his enthusiastic comrade up the snow-packed grade, staying several paces behind.

LIEUTENANT VIRGIL
Staples looked up at the man sitting on a branch twelve feet above the ground. The lunatic did not have a gun. Not in his hand.
Might be in his pocket, though
. “Sir, please keep your hands where we can see them.” As an afterthought, he added in a hopeful tone, “You might as well climb down.”

The climber shook his head.

Another state trooper pointed out the obvious: “There’s no way you can get away, mister. We’ve got you surrounded.”

Felix Navarone’s eyes darted from one uniform to another. “I’m not comin’ down.”

The troopers exchanged glances. Muttered among themselves about who should climb up to get the man. There was a general consensus that Staples should do the climbing—by right, this was
his
prisoner. Officer Staples, who did not wish to soil his immaculate uniform on the bark of the cottonwood, opined that it would be best to chop the tree down. An older trooper quipped that Staples should just shoot the citizen off the limb—if he thought he could hit him at this range. All in all, the encounter with the tree climber was becoming a quite jolly event.

Startling everyone, the Apache threw back his head. Howled.

One trooper offered the opinion that this was a fair-to-middling imitation of a gray wolf.

Another argued that it was more like the sound of a redbone hound.

The treed man howled again.