Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (18 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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“Yes,” Rain Crow said. “He was the guard who watched the Fire Dogs last night.”
Rain Crow stood, his blocky body bulging muscles. Rage twisted his crooked face. “It seems that now we have an explanation for the haste of their departure.” His hands knotted to fists. “He is my sister’s son, Matron. A member of my clan.”
She straightened up, but her eyes remained on the dead youth. “Then I will leave it to you to make sure his killer pays for this.”
 
 
BROWSER SAT ON a crumbling stone wall overlooking the ruins of Northern Town. He’d called a brief halt, and for their part, his small band had taken advantage of it. They sat or reclined, taking the moment
to sip from their canteens, eat, and rest. Uncle Stone Ghost lay flat on his back on his gray blanket, snoring softly.
Browser’s gaze drifted to the right and he studied the charred ruins of Northern Town. The First People had built this place as the northern boundary of their empire. That was before the construction of Flowing Waters Town, before the abandonment of Straight Path Canyon. Made People had reoccupied the place but twenty sun cycles past. Some had been believers in the katsinas. Then, earlier this cycle, all had been killed. Massacred. Rumors blamed Flute Player warriors. It was said that here, too, the children had been herded onto the tower kiva roof, and the town set ablaze.
Did the bodies of children lie down there? Charred and lonely like those they had left behind at Longtail village?
He tried to shake off the feeling of doom, but couldn’t take his gaze from the dead town. The roofs had fallen in to expose soot-blackened walls. A reddish tinge of oxidation could be seen around the tower kiva at the spine of the E-shaped building. Several human skeletons lay in the plaza. Their tattered, sun-faded clothing flapped as Wind Baby played among the whitening bones. The flesh was long gone to the crows, coyotes, and insects.
How far had his people fallen that they could leave their dead unburied? What had happened to the last of these people’s families? Had their relatives fled in such terror that they dared not return to care for their kin? Without the proper rituals, the soul was condemned to wander the earth forever, homeless and alone, always searching for loved ones it could never find.
Browser feared that would happen to him, as did most warriors who fought lonely battles far from home.
Beyond the silent wreckage of the town lay the brown waters of the Squash Blossom River. Riffles washed the muddy banks and curled around the winter-bare
willows. Tan sandstone terraces cast shadows across the far floodplain. Only the buttes and stone pillars on the heights gleamed in the slanted sunlight.
Catkin climbed up beside Browser and handed him a corn cake. Browser took it and smiled his thanks.
“We made good time,” she told him, and gazed at the burned town below. A faint moan rose from the wind echoing in the roofless rooms.
“We did,” Browser agreed around a mouthful. “Especially considering the ages of Uncle Stone Ghost and that old Mogollon, White Cone. Even Obsidian is moving well.”
“She’s motivated,” Catkin said. “Every time she starts to lag, I remind her of witches’ spindles and skewered hearts.”
Browser smothered a smile. Westward, Jackrabbit ran through an abandoned cornfield, checking to see that no one hid amid the old stalks. “It must be hard, knowing that a witch wishes to cut your heart out of your body.”
A stone’s throw away, Obsidian leaned back on a blanket, her beautiful face to the sun. Gleaming black hair spilled down her arms. Browser studied the woman, aware of how that posture stretched her light blue dress against her full breasts.
“I wouldn’t be thinking of her beauty, if I were you.” Catkin pointed to the dead who lay unburied in the plaza below them. “We don’t want to end up like that.”
“No.” Browser squinted against the sun, turning his thoughts from Obsidian’s voluptuous body to Catkin’s oval face with its turned-up nose. Her dark eyes had a gleam. “Do you really think I’m so foolish?”
She took another bite of her corn cake and, as she ate it, said, “Yes.”
Browser finished his cake and dusted his hands off on his leather pants. “Your confidence in me has always been a comfort, Catkin.”
She continued gazing down at Obsidian. “I have
been thinking about what happened at Flowing Waters Town. About the prophet’s death.”
“Have you come to any conclusions?”
“Just one. I fear that whoever murdered the prophet did so with help from inside Flowing Waters Town.”
Browser lifted a shoulder. “It’s possible, though I doubt Matron Blue Corn knew about it.”
“Why do you say that?” Catkin pulled up one of her long legs and squinted at him.
“It would be too risky. If the Fire Dogs found out, they would destroy her village and kill every member of her clan.” Browser frowned at the gutted ruins below. A charred beam swung in the wind, creaking and groaning.
“Well, perhaps you are right that Blue Corn wasn’t involved, but there are others in whom she places her trust. How else could the murderer sneak in, kill the guard, and then mutilate the prophet? Blue Corn had guards posted to watch the Mogollon. Yet, no one heard anything? No one saw anything?”
“It strikes me as even more odd that the Mogollon only posted two guards to protect their prophet,” Browser said. “What could White Cone have been thinking?”
Catkin pulled her canteen from her shoulder and sipped at the cold water. “Obviously he wasn’t thinking.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and gave the canteen to Browser. “I have considered the possibility that Rain Crow was the traitor inside the walls.”
“Why?”
She turned to the sandstone bluffs beyond the river and carefully scanned the tumbled boulders, the shadowed cracks, and the patches of brush. “He seems like a weak man to me, easily seduced.”
The way she said the last word, and the fact that her gaze remained on Obsidian, made Browser sit up
straighter. “You think he was seduced and, in exchange, he let the murderer in to kill the prophet?”
“I think it likely. Men are frail creatures, Browser.”
Browser sipped from the canteen. He didn’t wish to respond to that statement, mostly because he feared it was true. “But I would think the frog-faced elder a more likely traitor. I never heard his name, but he seemed to have Blue Corn’s ear. Either of them could have ordered the guard away. It would have given the killer plenty of time.”
“Especially if the killer was a woman.” Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at Obsidian.
Browser looked, too. No man alive could resist looking at a woman like Obsidian. An aura of sexuality floated around her the way mist did a steaming body on a winter morning.
“You think Obsidian killed the Mogollon prophet?”
“No. I saw her face in the kiva afterward. She didn’t look like a woman who had just committed murder. No, I think …” She absently sloshed her canteen, checking how much water remained. “I think her sister killed him. I think that after she finished with Rain Crow, she walked right up to the Mogollon guard, and her smile enchanted him the way a snake does a bird. Then she struck.”
Browser dusted the blue corn crumbs from the hem of his war shirt. He didn’t like this line of thought, but it had to be considered. “Then it is also possible that Rain Crow, or whoever the traitor is, is allied with the White Moccasins. In which case, they will certainly wish to stop us.”
“You mean kill us. Well …” She paused, and rephrased her words. “They may not wish to kill you, Stone Ghost, or Obsidian, but the rest of us will not be so lucky.”
Browser bowed his head and grimaced at the crumbling wall. He’d been meaning to discuss it with her. After all, she’d been in the cave when Two Hearts had
shouted that Browser had the blood of the First People running in his veins. She wasn’t a fool. She must have known what it meant the instant the old witch said it. “I should have told you myself, but I didn’t know for certain until Uncle Stone Ghost told me.”
Catkin shrugged. “I’m not the only one worried about hidden First People. You realize that, don’t you?”
He looked down at the Mogollon warriors and heaved a sigh. “Yes. I have been worried about it for some time.”
“Good.”
He brushed at his long shirt again. “Catkin, thank you, for all you have done for me over the last sun cycle. I have been a poor War Chief. Without you, I would have made even more mistakes than I did.”
Her eyes softened, and she gave him that calm affectionate look reserved only for him. “You have lost so much, Browser, your wife, your son. Everyone wobbles after such events. I’m glad I could help you.”
He hesitated, then reached out and touched her cheek. It felt cool and smooth. “You are my best friend, Catkin. Without you … I’m sure I would fall on my face.”
Her smile warmed the cold place in his soul. “As I would without you.”
Neither of them said anything for a time.
Then Catkin said, “Well, we should be on our way.”
Browser stood up and stretched his tired back muscles. “Yes, let’s go wake our elders.”
As he led the way down to the river, he tried not to stare overly long at the unburied dead.
 
 
PIPER HUNCHES OVER and walks deeper, away from the sunlight. The darkness hurts her eyes a little,
like when she puts her hands on ice in the winter, but it is warm in here. The fitted stones under her feet whisper as she walks.
“Hello,” she calls, just to see if anyone answers back.
Her own voice hisses around her.
She walks faster and the water jar clunks against her hip, making little stabs.
As she nears the circle of sunlight ahead, Piper breathes deep, taking the old smells of dust and people into her heart, letting them sit there awhile before she blows them out and away.
Then she runs out into the sunlight, and toward the water-filled sandstone cistern in the rock ten paces ahead.
She quickly unties the jar from her belt and sinks it below the icy water.
Wind Baby spins over the ridgetop, kicking up dust, and tugging at Piper’s hair.
She ignores him, and looks back at the jar that’s filling up.
From under the water, a little girl stares at her. An ugly little girl, with a dirty face and hair like a dead bear’s, filled with grass and sticks.
Piper leans closer and glares into the little girl’s eyes.
Wondering why she’s locked underwater where she’s always cold. Wondering why the little girl doesn’t just leap up and run away through the warm sunlight.
Piper’s mouth whispers, but she doesn’t know whose voice it is:
“Because there are monsters on the trails. Big monsters with sharp teeth.”
Piper frowns at the little girl and tries to figure out how the girl could use her mouth to speak.
Piper leans down until her lips touch the water and the little girl’s eyes are shining black stars.
“Don’t be such a little baby,” she whispers. “You’re
fast. You can run faster than any monster.”
But the little girl’s eyes say she doesn’t believe this. They are wide and scared.
“Then you’re stupid,” Piper says and gets to her feet.
Piper pulls her jar from the pool, ties it to her belt, and bravely stalks back toward the dark hole.
But high up above her an owl “hoo-hoos.”
Piper stops to look. It is strange to see an owl in the daylight.
The owl lazily spirals down and lands on a boulder to Piper’s right.
He has huge blinking eyes.
“Hello,” Piper whispers.
“Hello,” the owl answers.
 
 
GARDUNO’S BIG MEXICAN restaurant was packed. Dusty and Maureen sat at a booth with a basket of tortilla chips and a bowl of wonderfully spicy salsa between them. The place had real atmosphere with its gaudy piñatas, pictures of Mexican heroes and antiheroes, bits of brightly painted furniture and knickknacks. A Saltillo tile floor was immaculate. Melodic brassy mariachi music seemed to propel the busy staff as they bustled back and forth with drinks, orders, and plates of steaming food.
Maureen used a chip to scoop up salsa and studied Dusty’s pinched expression. He kept stroking his blond beard as if for something to do. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.” He took a long drink of his Negra Modelo, a rich Mexican dark beer. “I feel like screaming, throwing the furniture around, and breaking things. So, if I start baring my soul, everyone here will regret it.”
“That’s a healthy response. I’d be worried about you if you didn’t feel that way.”
He stared sadly down into his half-empty mug, and Maureen could see the lines around his blue eyes tighten, like a man bracing against an almost overpowering strain. He hadn’t shed a tear, hadn’t railed against life, hadn’t gone somewhere alone to lick his wounds. He’d been the epitome of strength. All business. No emotion. She wondered how long he could last.
She reached across the table and grasped his hand. “I can’t give you any answers. I don’t know any. What I can do is share your grief. If you want to talk about Dale—”
“You may not have any answers,” Dusty cut her off, “but somebody does. I have to find out who.”
“Want to elaborate on that?” She released his hand and reached for another tortilla chip. When he was ready, he’d talk to her.
“Dale was murdered by a witch, Maureen, or someone wants us to think it was a witch. My mother and her old lover are tied up in it, and I heard their voices on the phone; they both thought Dale was doing something to them.” His frown deepened. “Could he have been? I’ve seen him play some pretty tasteless jokes on people, but when he left Pueblo Animas the other day, he wasn’t in combat mode. At least, I didn’t see it, if he was.”
“Combat mode?” she asked.
Dusty shoved his mug between his palms. “Like over the cannibalism thing. Tim White, Christy Turner, and others have proved that people were eating people eight hundred years ago in the Southwest, but it’s politically incorrect. When Dale wrote an article supporting the
idea, the archaeological community went berserk—including, it seems, Carter Hawsworth. How could Dale, one of the great southwestern archaeologists, say something so terrible about their darling Anasazi? Dale stomped around for days, writing comments to the journals, delivering professional papers, phoning radio talk shows. He was a man on a mission, and the mission was that where science took us, we had to follow—even if it was uncomfortable.” A faint smile touched his lips. “I remember him saying, ‘William, when are my colleagues going to drop this alabaster Anasazi crap? We’re not talking about angels; they were human beings! No better or worse than any other people!’”
Maureen laughed, remembering the fire in Dale’s eyes when he took up a cause. “But you didn’t see that at Pueblo Animas?”
“No.” Dusty stopped shoving his mug and gripped it in both hands. “If he’d done something to Hawsworth or Sullivan—some perverted joke—he’d have shown it. Especially when he was looking at me. This was my mother and the man she left my father for. He probably wouldn’t have told me outright, but I’d have known something was bugging him, and that somehow I was involved. No, this thing surprised him.”
“What do you mean?”
His blue eyes glittered when he looked up. “Think about his house. He obviously went home to Albuquerque, pulled a TV dinner out of the freezer, and sat down to eat it. Then, something happened, a phone call, a knock on the door, and Dale never finished his dinner. Instead he immediately drove to Chaco Canyon, parked at Casa Rinconada, and walked out into the ruins. Looking for what? Did he go there to meet someone? Who?”
Maureen paused to drink her coffee. When she set the cup down again, she said, “You think it was your mother?”
Maureen tried to imagine how she’d ever be able to
deal with Ruth Ann Sullivan if she should ever meet her at a conference.
Dusty shrugged. “I wouldn’t put anything past her, but more likely it’s Carter Hawsworth. After all, he’s here in New Mexico studying Navajo witchcraft. And nobody that I know of—and I know
everyone
—even knows he’s here. That’s very strange, don’t you think?”
Maureen reached out and dipped a chip into the salsa. “The skinned feet, that’s Navajo, right?”
“Yes, but the yucca hoop and the human flesh in Dale’s mouth,” Dusty countered, “that’s Puebloan witchcraft. Not that it matters. Hispanic, Puebloan, and Navajo witches have borrowed from each other until the traditional lines have been blurred. Witches take power where they find it.”
“What about burying him upside down? Did you understand that part about ‘a white guy with his head in the underworlds’?”
“Puebloan peoples believe they came to this world by climbing through a series of underworlds. Kivas are openings to the underworlds. Don’t you see? Dale’s death was specifically tailored to him. Buried? In an archaeological site? With his head in the ground? How metaphorical can you get?”
Maureen considered that. “But would Hawsworth think that way? What do you know about him?”
Dusty tugged at his beard. “Well, I may have refused to read his professional articles, but he was the low-rent that screwed my mother before he ran off with her. Call it a morbid fascination. I actually have paid attention to his career.”
“And?”
“He finished his Ph.D. at Cambridge, writing about Zuni metaphysics. Within a year he and Ruth Ann were floating around the South Pacific, doing Polynesian ethnography. Crystal waters, white beaches, coconuts, and friendly brown natives, that kind of thing. Two years, and a couple of controversial articles later, they were
in central Australia, based in Alice Springs, where they spent quite a bit of time involved in Aboriginal ethnology. When I was nine, I was leafing through a copy of Dale’s
Anthropology News
and saw a picture of them sharing a witchetty grub.”
“A what?” Maureen asked quizzically.
“A big worm. An insect larva with about the same amount of protein that you’d get from a pork chop. Aborigines eat them raw. They don’t have fancy Mexican restaurants like this in the Outback.” Dusty scooped salsa onto a chip before returning to his narrative. “Ruth and Carter broke up in New Zealand. They were doing something with the Maori. Scuttlebutt says it got ugly in a hotel room in Wellington with screaming and hitting, and policemen dragging them apart.”
“Isn’t that about when Ruth Ann started to publish her books?” Maureen asked, thinking back, trying to remember when that first big best-seller had hit the market. Maureen had been an undergraduate at McGill. The book had been all the rave in the cultural anthropology classes.
“Yeah.” Dusty took another swig of his beer. “Rumor has it that she hated him so much she wanted to discredit his research. Rather than try and do it at the meetings and in the professional journals, she took it to a mainstream publisher. She put her arguments in a popular book that ordinary people could understand, and sold it. Most of her theories could be supported, too, which gave her professional recognition, and an entire generation of people thought in her terms about human culture. When you think about it, what’s more powerful, a well-argued article in
American Anthropologist
that only your colleagues will read, or a popular book read by millions?”
Maureen glanced around the restaurant. “I saw her on CBC one time. She was talking about the single-mother households and how after so many generations
we had created a traditional matrilineage—especially among black populations and lower economic classes. She was arguing that until the dominant society realized that, we would continue to stumble in initiating social programs.”
“Right. Everybody in the world has seen her on the CBC, CNN, or PBS, and outside of a few cultural anthropologists, who’s ever heard of Hawsworth?”
“I hadn’t until Dale mentioned him out at the 10K3 site in Chaco.” Maureen leaned back as the waitress deposited a heaping plate of blue corn enchiladas. Thick chunks of pork dotted a tomatillo sauce. Melted cheddar topped the creation while a fresh whole jalapeno acted as a not-so-subtle garnish. She took a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of cumin and refried beans.
Dusty picked up his fork and began thoughtfully whittling away at his giant burrito—the gut bomb sort that bulged with carne picadillo, beans, and peppers.
While Dusty ate, lost in thought, Maureen kept replaying Dusty’s story of seeing Carter Hawsworth and Ruth Ann Sullivan through the bedroom door. No wonder Dusty had had so many problems with women. His mother had screwed another man in front of his eyes, then she’d left, his father had committed suicide, and Dusty had been raised by Dale Emerson Robertson, a confirmed bachelor who never formed a serious long-term relationship with a woman. What kind of role models had Dusty had? The deck had been stacked against him from the beginning.
“I like Sam Nichols,” Dusty said as he pushed his empty plate back.
“So do I.” As Maureen speared another forkful of refritos, her stomach felt like it would burst. This place didn’t skimp on food, that was for certain.
“But he’s not going to solve this,” Dusty said solemnly.
Maureen arched an inquisitive eyebrow. “Why is that?”
Dusty wiped his mouth with his napkin and tossed it on the table. “Because he doesn’t believe in witchcraft.”
Maureen’s fork hovered over her refritos. “You think that’s a prerequisite?”
“It damn sure helps.”
Maureen gave him a worried look. “He’ll call it ‘interfering with an investigation,’ Dusty.”
“Interfering, hell. I may be the
only
one who can solve Dale’s murder. He can ride along in the back of the Bronco, for all I care.”
“He might frown at that gun you keep under your seat.”
“This is New Mexico, Doctor, unlike Canada, we—”
The cell phone rang. Dusty reached into his shirt pocket, flipped out the small phone, and held it to his ear. “This is Stewart.” He listened for a moment. “Sure, Rupert.” Dusty glanced up at Maureen and his eyes tightened. “No, they haven’t released the body yet. They’re awaiting test results.” Dusty listened for a time, nodding; then there was a long pause where he didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. Finally, in a low voice, he answered, “Hell, yes. You give me a permit, and you damn betcha I’ll dig it. Uh-huh. Saturday. Right. Bye.”
He punched the END button and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Remember Rupert Brown? The park superintendent at Chaco? He has a Ph.D. in archaeology.”
“What does he want you to dig?”
Dusty finished his beer in three swallows and set the mug on the table. “The site where Dale was found. Rupert thinks there’s a reason Dale was killed there.”
 
 
BROWSER SAT UP in the darkness and reached for his war club. Through the doorway of the dilapidated room he could see the Evening People shining over the ruins of Twin Heroes village.
On the other side of the room, Catkin silently sat up in her blankets. Barely audible, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He paused. “Yet.”
Fabric rustled as she looked around. “Something disturbed you?”
“By now our enemies know that we are traveling south on this road. Even if everyone in our party is trustworthy, others use this road. Someone will have seen our tracks.” He shivered as he reached for his cape. “Roll your things and let’s awaken the others. I want to be gone from here.”
A half-hand of time later, Browser led them, blinking and yawning, out of the shadowed ruins and onto the road.
They marched in silence until just before dawn; then Browser took them off the road and headed west into the undulating hills above the Squash Blossom breaks. As they hiked up onto the sheer rimrock, he heard Obsidian’s voice: “Browser? Where are you going? This isn’t the way.” She trotted up beside him, breathing hard. The pale blue light shimmered through her long hair and glinted in her black cotton cape.
“I know that, Obsidian,” he answered, and turned to Catkin. “Take the others and continue on across the rimrock. Parallel the Great North Road, but do not set foot on it. I will stay here for a time, to watch our back trail.”
Catkin glanced curiously at Obsidian, but said, “Yes, War Chief,” and left at a trot.
Obsidian started to leave, but Browser grabbed her arm. “No, I want you to stay with me.”
She glared at his hand. “Why?”
Browser watched Catkin speak briefly with Stone Ghost and White Cone; then she led the party due south. In less than five hundred heartbeats they had crossed over the ridge and disappeared.
Browser released Obsidian. “I think we are being followed. I want you to watch with me.”

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