Hour of the Hunter (51 page)

The pain was terrible, beyond anything he could have imagined, but what was worse, Carlisle feared Diana Ladd had escaped. He started toward the door.

"Where are you, bitch?"

"Here," Diana responded from someplace else in the room. "I'm behind you." To decoy Davy's safe escape, she wanted Carlisle's attention focused solely on her.

'Where?"

,:Right here," she answered again, and it sounded as though she was laughing at him.

Doggedly, like an unstoppable monster from an old B-grade movie, Andrew Carlisle whirled and came crawling toward her, but before he made any progress, something heavy landed on his back. Horrified, he felt a dog's inch-long canines plunge into the back of his neck.

Too stunned to move and trying to stem the flow of blood from her own arm, Diana could do nothing but watch.

The dog was everywhere at once, huge jaws snapping. He leaped up and backward and sideways, always staying just out of the man's reach.

Finally, Bones's jaws closed over Carlisle's wrist.

While the man howled in inhuman rage, the dog shook his massive head.

Bones crunched in Carlisle's mangled wrist. Tendons and nerves snapped like so many broken rubber bands.

Arm upraised, owij in hand, Rita emerged from the root cellar ready to do battle. She, too, stood transfixed, watching the man struggle to escape the attacking dog. Trying to save his mangled wrist, Carlisle attempted one last kick. The dog let go of the hand and pounced on the foot. As the dog's jaws closed once more, Carlisle folded himself into a fetal position.

Rita remained where she was for a moment, surveying the room, while Carlisle sobbed brokenly. "Get the dog off me. Please, get him off."

The Indian woman pocketed her owij. It was no longer needed. Across the room, she saw both the knife and the gun. She hurried at once to retrieve them. Only when she had them both firmly in her possession did she speak to the dog.

"Oh'o, ihab." The dog came to her side at once, wagging his tail, waiting to be petted. "Good gogs," she crooned, patting his shaggy head. "It's over."

Rita turned from the dog and placed the gun in Diana's lap. "Here," she said. "If you wish to shoot him, now's your chance. Do it quickly."

Diana looked from Rita to the stricken form of Andrew Carlisle, who lay sobbing on the floor in a widening pool of his own urine. Finally, Diana looked down at the gun and shook her head.

"No," she said. "I don't have to now. It wouldn't be self-defense."

A radiant smile suffused Rita's weathered old face.

"Good," she said. 'Titoi would be proud of you."

Behind them, Brandon Walker burst into the room. Bone turned to fend off this new attack, but before he could, the oven door blew its hinges with a resounding thump, knocking the dog to the floor.

Crying and laughing both, Diana knelt beside Bone and cradled his massive head in her lap. The dog looked up at her gratefully and thumped his long tail on the floor. He wasn't hurt, but it had been a hard day for a dog. He didn't want to get up.

Detective Farrell and Myrna Louise arrived just ahead of a phalanx of police cars dispatched by Hank Maddern at the Pima County Sheriff's Department. For the first time in her life, she refused Andrew's summons when he asked for her. Stone-faced and without getting out of the car, Myrna Louise watched while her son was loaded into a waiting ambulance. Ironically, he was taken first. Of all the injuries, his were deemed the most serious.

But not serious enough, Myrna Louise thought bitterly, not nearly serious enough. If she'd been lucky-and she had never been lucky where her son was concerned Andrew would have died. Someone would have put a bullet through his wretched head and taken him out of his misery, the way they used to do with rabid dogs.

After that, another stretcher came out of the house with someone strapped to it. The old Indian woman-what was her name again-limped heavily along beside the stretcher and climbed into the waiting ambulance to ride to the hospital, although she herself didn't seem to be hurt.

A few minutes later, Myrna Louise recognized Diana Ladd. She, too, was carried past the detective's car to an ambulance, with a man wailing along beside her. Thank God they weren't dead, Myrna Louise thought gratefully. She never could have lived with herself if that had happened.

Myrna Louise sat there quietly, knowing that eventually it would be her turn to answer questions. What would she say about Andrew when they asked her? Tell the truth, she thought. And what would happen when the neighbors on Weber Drive found out that Andrew Carlisle was her son?

Would they still speak to her?

Myrna Louise sighed. She could always move again, she supposed. She'd done it before. Maybe she'd get herself one of those U-Hauls. What did they call that, "an adventure In moving"? She'd drive herself far away and start over again, somewhere where nobody knew her.

But first, she thought, she'd have to get herself a driver's license, and maybe even a pair of glasses.

Davy sat in the crack and waited. That's what he would call it from now on, Fitoi's crack. He wondered how it would feel to be a fly and to go back down to the house.

He would be able to see what was happening, but nobody would know he was there. He wanted to know and yet he didn't. He was afraid to know.

His mother was still alive when he ran past her, and so was Nana Dahd, but were they still? He couldn't tell.

Bone had wanted to come with him, but he had ordered the dog to stay.

Now, he wished he hadn't. Why didn't Bone come looking for him? Why didn't someone else?

While he watched, a string of cop cars came streaming down the canyon road, lights flashing. It- looked like a parade, except it wasn't.

There were no floats, no marching bands. The police cars were all going to his house. What would they find there? Would his mother still be alive?

When he first reached the cleft in the rock, he was panting, out of breath, afraid that the terrible man was right behind him. Now, as more time passed, he wondered who would come for him. Nana Dahd had been very specific about that. She had told him he must wait until morning, wait for someone he knew.

He shifted his body. The sharp rocks behind his back were growing uncomfortable. What if they forgot all about him and nobody came?

Maybe he'd end up living there forever. How long was forever, anyway?

Three more sets of flashing lights came down the winding road and pulled in at the driveway. How many police cars did it take? he wondered.

What was happening? He kept thinking his mother would come for him or Rita, but the longer it went without anyone coming, the more he was afraid they were dead.

What happened to you after you were dead? That was one of the things he was supposed to talk about with Father john the next time he saw him.

Davy thought about Father John lying there so still on the root-cellar floor. and he thought about what the priest had said as they were leaving to take Bone to the vet.

How had that Prayer gone? Davy squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated, trying to remember the exact words.

"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

The Father he could understand, and he could understand the Son, but who was the Holy Ghost? Maybe, thought Davy, the Holy Ghost was I,itoi. So he bowed his head, just as he had seen Rita do, just like Father John, and he said a prayer for his mother, for Nana Dahd, for Father john, and also for Oh'o. He finished by praying, "in the name of the Father, Of the Son, and of I'itoi. Amen." It sounded a little different, but Davy was sure it meant the same thing.

Just then, as he finished the prayer, he heard a rock go scrabbling down the face of the cliff. He drew back inside the rocky cleft, making himself as small as possible, holding his breath, afraid that somehow the ohb had managed to escape and was coming after him.

He listened. Clearly now, he could hear footsteps coming closer and closer, as though whoever was coming knew the path to the crack, as though they knew all about Davy's secret hiding place.

"Olhoni?" Someone was calling his name, his Indian name, but it wasn't Nana Dahd. Who could it be then?

No one else called him that. The voice wasn't familiar, and Nana Dahd had given him strict orders to wait for someone he knew.

Then, suddenly, Bone thrust his spiked head into the entrance to the crack and covered the boy's face with wet, slobbery kisses. Behind the dog, a man's face peered in the small opening.

"Olhoni? Are you in there?"

Weak with relief, Davy let his breath out. It was Fat Crack.

"Hell'u," he answered. "Yes."

"Come on, boy," the Indian said, gently moving the dog aside. "An old man and I are waiting to take you to the hospital."

Hospital? The word made Davy's heart hurt. "Is my mother all right?" he asked. "Is Nana dead?"

"Your mother is hurt, but not bad," the Indian said quietly. "Rita went with Father John. Come on. Everyone will be better once they know you are safe."

As soon as Davy was outside the cave, Bone careened around him in ecstatically happy circles, but the boy was not ready to play. This was still far too serious. What he had lived through that day was anything but a game.

"What about the ohb?" Davy asked. "Is he dead?"

"No, nawoj," Fat Crack replied. "Me ohb isn't dead, but he didn't win.

He's in the hospital, too. Your dog almost bit his hand off. Rita wouldn't let him."

"She should have," Davy said angrily. "What will happen to him now?"

Fat Crack shrugged. "The Mil-gahn will send him back to the Mil-gahn jail, I guess."

"Will he get out again?" Davy asked.

"Who knows?" Fat Crack said, shaking his head. "That, Olhoni, is up to the Mil-gahn, isn't it."

Chapter Twenty

WANTING TO BE the first to kill, Rattlesnake crept close to Evil Siwani's camp, so the next ‘morning, when the battle started, Rattlesnake killed first, and he chose the place that is now called Rattlesnake House.

When the battle was finally over, Evil Siwani was dead, and his house and all his people had been destroyed.

SO Fitoi told the warriors who had helped him that they should choose where they wanted to live. Some people wanted to be farmers, and they went to live by the river.

Since then they have been called Akimel O'othham, or the River People.

Some of the warriors were hunters, so they went to live near Waw Giwulk, which means Constricted Rock and which the Mil-gahn call Baboquivari.

There they found plenty of mule deer to hunt and lots of other good food to eat. the people who stayed there have been called Tohono O'othharn, or the Desert People.

And that is the story of how the Desert People emerged from the center of the earth to help Titoi battle the Evil Siwani, and how they came to live here in this desert country where, nawoj, my friend. they still continue to live even to this day.

The feast was well under way. In four days' time, word had got around the reservation that Rita Antone's luck had changed for the better.

The ritual singing had been well attended, and the feast was a rousing success. The expense was more than Rita alone could have managed, but someone else was helping to defray the cost. Eduardo Jose, the bootlegger from Ahngarn, whose grandson, Lucky One, had recently been released from the Pinal County Jail, was more than happy to help out.

Rita had spent two days sitting at Father John's bedside at St. Mary's Hospital. Now, she sat at the head of the long oilcloth-covered table in the feast house at Sells. Davy, his face still bearing telltale traces of red chili, sat on one side of her. Diana Ladd sat on the other.

Shyly, a girl of sixteen or seventeen sidled up to Rita's chair, hanging back a moment before daring to say what she had come to say.

"I remember you," she said almost in a whisper. "You used to make us eat our vegetables."

Instantly, Davy's ears perked up. "Wait a minute. You, too? I thought I was the only one."

Rita laughed. "No," she said. "I try to get all children to do that.

Gordon taught me to eat my vegetables when I was sick in California."

"Gordon your son?" Davy asked.

"No. Gordon my husband. I was very sick, and he and Mrs. Bailey, the Mil-gahn lady he worked for, told me that if I ate all my vegetables, it would make me better, and it worked. I'm still here, aren't I?"

They all laughed at that, even Diana.

In four days, that was the first time Davy had heard his mother laugh, so maybe now she would be all right, just like Detective Walker said.

He had told Davy it would take time, that the ohb, Carlisle, had hurt her badly, but that if they were very careful of her, she would be okay.

The boy looked around, noticing for the first time that the men had all disappeared.

"Where's Fat Crack?" he asked.

Rita shrugged. "Out by the truck, I guess."

Davy promptly set off to find him.

The four men gathered in an informal group around the hood of Fat Crack's tow truck. The medicine man tried to explain Whore Sickness to the detective. He told him it was Staying Sickness and not the bacon grease that had caused Andrew Carlisle's blindness. This was all quite strange to Brandon Walker, although he tried to listen with an open mind.

No one was surprised when Looks At Nothing opened his leather pouch and pulled out one of his cigarettes. Walker watched with renewed amazement as once again the old man flicked open his Zippo lighter and unerringly lit the cigarette.

Upon hearing Brandon would be driving the boy and the two women out to the reservation for the baptism feast, Hank Maddern had warned his friend about not being sucked into some strange kind of peyote ritual.

Brandon had quickly put Hank's worries to rest.

"Believe me," he said. "Tobacco is the only thing in that old man's cigarettes, and it's not very damn good tobacco, either."

Looks At Nothing took a deep drag, said, "Nawcj," and then passed it along to Father John. The priest had spent three full days in the hospital being treated for a concussion, but he had convinced the doctor that he had to be dismissed in time to go to a feast in Sells on Friday.