Hour of the Hunter (26 page)

The wind was coming from the north. Wind caught Hahshani's seeds and carried them up over the mountaintops, scattering them on the south sides of the mountains.

And that is why, to this day, Giant Cactus grows only on the south sides of the mountains. And since then, every year, the people have held the feast of the cactus wine.

The night was cooling fast. In the desert outside Sells, a coyote howled and was answered by a chorus of village dogs. It was a pleasant, peaceful sound that made both Papago men feel relaxed and at home.

For some time, Looks At Nothing sat smoking the wiw, the wild tobacco, and saying nothing. Fat Crack admired the old man's concentration and stubbornness He had beard stories about how the injured Looks At Nothing, returning to the reservation from Ajo, had shunned the white man's ways, including alcohol and store-bought tobacco and cigarettes.

The only alcohol the medicine man consumed was the cactus wine made once a year from fruit of the giant cactus. He smoked only the native tobacco, gathered from plants growing wild in the sandy washes.

The single exception, his post-World War H Zippo lighter, was more a concession to old age than it was to the Mil-gahn.

As the burning sticks of rolled tobacco moved back and forth between them, and as the smoke eddied away from them into the dark sky, Fat Crack could see why this particular tobacco smoke might still retain some of its ancient power.

"What do you believe caused the accident?" Looks At Nothing asked at last.

"A steer ran across the road in front of the truck," Fat Crack answered.

"When she tried to miss it, the tire caught on the shoulder and the truck rolled. That's what Law and Order told me."

"That may be how the accident happened," Looks At Nothing said, "but it's not what caused it. Do you know this Anglo child Hejel Wi'ithag lives with, the one she calls Olhoni?"

Fat Crack nodded. "Davy Ladd. His mother is a widow. Rita lives with them and looks after the boy. What about him?"

"The boy is the real cause of your aunt's accident."

"Davy Ladd? How? He's only six. He was at the hospital.

He sure wouldn't hurt her. They say he saved her life."

Looks At Nothing's cigarette glowed softly in the night.

He passed it back to Fat Crack. "The boy is unbaptized.

His mother was born a Catholic, but he himself has never been inside a church. Do you know the old priest from San Xavier?"

It took a moment for Fat Crack to follow what seemed like an abrupt change of subject, but finally he nodded and smiled. Looks At Nothing and Father John were contemporaries, but the medicine man thought the Anglo was old.

"Yes. My mother told me about him. He's retired now, but he still helps out sometimes."

"He was once a special friend of your aunt's. We must go to him tomorrow, in Tucson. We will tell him about this problem and ask his advice. I will call for singers to treat the boy in the traditional way, but Father John must do the other."

This is crazy, Fat Crack thought. He was familiar with the old superstition that claimed being around unbaptized babies was dangerous and caused accidents, but supposedly only Indian babies were hazardous in this fashion. That's what he'd been told.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked. "Why bother with two kinds of baptism when the boy isn't even Indian?

Besides, the accident already happened."

"The boy is a child of your aunt's heart," Looks At Nothing said softly.

"It doesn't matter if he's O'othham or not, and the accident isn't the only danger."

"It isn't?"

"While she was in the ambulance, Hejel Wi'ithag saw buzzards, three of them, sitting sunning themselves in the middle of the afternoon, not in the morning like they usually do. It is bad luck to see animals doing strange things. It means something bad is coming, something evil. Not only is it dangerous for your aunt, but for two other people as well."

The old man paused to smoke, and Fat Crack waited.

"There is something very puzzling in all this," Looks At Nothing continued finally. "The evil seems to be Ohb, and not Ohb, Apache and not Apache."

Fat Crack was struck by the medicine man's use of the old-fashioned word that means, interchangeably, both Apache and enemy.

"Yes," Fat Crack murmured under his breath, agreeing without knowing exactly why. "You're right. It is Ohb or at least Ohbsgam, Apachelike."

"You believe this to be true?" Looks At Nothing demanded.

Fat Crack stared up at the sky. Here was an undeniable answer to his earlier prayer for help. He hadn't expected it to come this soon, and certainly not in the guise of an old, blind medicine man, but surely the connection he had felt that afternoon was here again and stronger than ever.

"Do you remember my cousin, Gina, Rita's granddaughter?"

Looks At Nothing nodded. "The one who was murdered?"

"Yes, near the charco of old Rattlesnake Skull Village.

"I remember."

"There were two men involved, two Mil-gahn. One of them was the little boy's father, Olhoni's father. He committed suicide afterward. The other man went to jail." Fat Crack paused briefly.

"Go on," Looks At Nothing urged.

"One of the men bit off Gina's wipih, her nipple. At the time it was said the dead man did it, that he was the one who bit her, but now I don't believe it. The same thing has happened again, just yesterday, to another woman at the base of Cloud-Stopper Mountain."

Both men were silent for some time, listening while the coyotes and dogs passed another series of greetings back and forth, sharing the night in a way not unlike the two men sharing their wild tobacco.

"Is it possible that the spirits of the dead Apaches invaded this Mil-gahn's spirit, making him Ohbsgam, so he is Apachelike without being Apache?"

"Yes," Looks At Nothing agreed, impressed by Fat Crack's intuition.

"Is it possible that this other man is out of jail?"

"After six years," Fat Crack replied, "it's possible."

"We must find out."

"I know the detective," Fat Crack said. "I met him. He was with the boy's mother when she came to the hospital last night. Perhaps he will help us."' "You will speak to him at once," Looks At Nothing ordered.

"All right," Fat Crack nodded. "Tomorrow. When we go to see the priest, I will also speak to the detective."

"Good," the medicine man said. "That's good."

Evidently, the council was finished, because Looks At Nothing snuffed out his cigarette and stood up. "It is late.

We should get some rest. Come for me at my camp beside the trees in the morning. We will go together to Chuk Shon."

Fat Crack stood up as well. One of his feet had fallen asleep. He almost fell.

"Wait, old man. I'll go get the truck and give you a ride.

"No," Looks At Nothing said. "Show me where the road is. I can find my way from there."

They flew Toby Walker to Tucson Medical Center in a helicopter.

Meanwhile, Hank Maddern and Brandon Walker tried to deal with the problem of the Pima County sheriff's car. Initially, the Cochise County detectives were determined to impound it. Eventually, though, after a late night sheriff-to-sheriff call, it was decided to let Brandon take it back to Tucson. Even when committed by an elderly father, joy-riding was, after all, nothing but a misdemeanor.

"This isn't the last we're going to hear about this," Maddem warned as he helped siphon gas into the bone-dry Galaxy. "DuShane's going to be pissed as hell about this, and he'll make your life miserable. You'll wind up directing traffic at the Pima County Fairgrounds before he's through."

Brandon thought about his unconscious father, helpless and strapped to the stretcher, being loaded into the waiting helicopter. The medics said it looked like a massive stroke.

"Let him do his worst," Brandon said. "Who gives a shit?"

"Good boy," Maddern told him. "Don't let the turkeys get you down."

Using siphoned gas, they got as far as Benson, where they filled up both vehicles. "You turn on your lights and get your ass to the hospital," Maddern ordered. "I'll pick up your mother on the way and meet you there as soon as we can."

"Thanks," Brandon said.

He appreciated having a little extra time before facing his mother. No doubt Louella Walker would take the position that her son had failed again, as usual. Regardless of what happened, Louella could always twist it into being his fault.

Brandon found Toby Walker in the intensive-care unit hooked up to a bank of machines. The doctor he spoke to was grave.

"Don't get your hopes up," he said.- "The next twenty-four hours are critical. We're dealing with not only a severe stroke, but also a severe sunburn. He's badly dehydrated. What was your father doing out in the desert alone like that?"

"He was going to Duluth," Brandon said.

"Duluth? That's in Minnesota."

"I know," Brandon replied, "but that's where he told the gas-station attendant he was going in nothing but a pair of pajamas."

"Your father was senile then?" the doctor asked.

"How could he be? He's not that old."

"You'd be surprised," the doctor said. "We're seeing more and more cases like this all the time. They seem to be getting younger instead of older. Even without the stroke, you'd soon find he wouldn't be able to care for himself."

"And with it?"

"It's not good," the doctor said, shaking his head. "Not good at all."

He walked away just as Louella surged into the room on Hank Maddem's arm and rushed up to Brandon. "How is he?" she demanded. "Can I see him?"

Brandon nodded. "You can see him once every hour for five minutes at a time."

"Tell me. Is he going to be all right?"

"Of course, Mom," Brandon told her. "He's going to be fine."

But with any kind of luck, Brandon thought, by morning Toby Walker wouldn't be alive.

Diana couldn't sleep. The rooms of her house were too small, too confining. With Bone at her side, she left the house and paced the yard, remembering how it had been that morning when Gary came home. He had been out all night, and she had spent the night consumed with alternating bouts of rage and worry, sure at times that he was dead in his truck somewhere, and convinced at others that he was out with another woman, just like before.

Why had she believed him when he said all that was behind him? She had trusted him enough, had enough faith in the future of their marriage, to stop taking the pill at last, to start trying to get pregnant. How could she have been so stupid? All that long night Diana had sat in the living room, an unread book open on her lap, listening for Gary's truck, watching for his headlights. By morning she found herself hoping that there had been an accident, that he'd wrapped himself around a telephone pole somewhere, so she wouldn't have to face what her woman's intuition warned her had happened, so she wouldn't have to do anything about it, so she wouldn't have to make a decision.

It was long after sunrise before he came home. Her heart pounded in her throat when she heard his inept fumbling at the lock. She didn't wait long enough for him to come inside and close the door. She didn't care if she woke up the neighbors, if all the other teachers in the compound heard every word.

"Where were you?"

"Out."

"Damn you. Where?"

"The dance. At San Pedro. I told you I was going there."

A cloud of alcohol-laden breath surrounded him, filling her nostrils and wrenching her gut, reminding her of her father.

"I thought they drank wine at the dances, cactus wine.

I didn't know they served beer."

Not looking at her, he started toward the bedroom.

"Please, Diana. Drop it. I've got to get some sleep."

,sleep!" she screeched, heaving the book across the room at him. Her aim was bad. The book hit the wall three feet behind his head and fell to the floor with an angry thud.

,You need sleep?" she raged, getting up and coming across the room after him. "What about me? I've been up all night, too, up and worried sick!"

He turned to face her, and the ravaged, stricken look on his face brought her up short. Something was terribly wrong, and she couldn't imagine what it was.

"I said drop it!"

The quiet menace in his words took her breath away. She had heard those very same words countless times before, spoken in just that tone of voice and with just that shade of meaning, but always before they had come from her father, always from Max Cooper. Never from her husband, never from Gary.

Without another word, he disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. For minutes afterward, she stood in the middle of the room staring at the door, too frightened to move, too sick to cry.

Room 831 in the Santa Rita Hotel was a reasonably plush two-room suite.

The bottle of champagne was on ice, and Johnny Rivkin had donned a blue silk smoking jacket by the time his expected guest turned the key in the lock. The blonde came in looking even more bedraggled than Johnny remembered. The dim light in the bar of the Reardon had been very kind.

"Welcome," Johnny said with a smile. "I'm glad you decided to come."

"I almost didn't," the blonde returned. "I don't remember how to do this anymore."

"Come on." Johnny did his best to sound cheerful and encouraging.

"It'll all come back to you. The two of us will have some fun. If you like dressing up, you might check out the closet in the other room. I work in the movies, you see.

I always keep a few nice things on hand just in case."

The blonde disappeared into the other room while Johnny busied himself with opening and pouring champagne. His hands shook some. He didn't know if it was nervousness or anticipation, maybe both. An unknown assignation was a lot like diving into an ice-cold swimming pool.

Once you were in, everything was fine, but getting in required nerve.

The blonde came back out wearing a long silk robe with nothing on underneath, walking with shoulders slouched, hands jammed deep in the pockets. His obvious nervousness made Johnny feel that much better.

"Here," he said, passing a glass. "Try this. It'll be good for what ails you."