The Night Visitor (16 page)

Sure, Moon thought. But what if it turned out the excavation was on tribal property… and there was a chance for a profit. Well, the sleeping mammoth spirit would be in for a pretty loud wake-up call.

As if he could read Moon's thoughts, Severo seemed slightly uneasy. “I just wanted you to know about the talk that's been going around. The council's already talked to a lawyer up in Durango. And hired a surveyor. Since you and McFain seem to get along pretty well, I'd appreciate it if you kinda kept an eye on what he's doin' out there.”

The policeman raised an eyebrow. “You mean like spy on him? Check to see if he's moved any fence posts onto Ute land?”

Roy Severo, who missed the sarcasm, pondered this for a moment. “Yeah. That's a damn good idea, Charlie. You think up some excuse to pay our Navajo neighbor a visit. And do it today.” And he was gone.

Moon unfolded the newspaper. The follow-up story on the “McFain Mammoth” was on page three. It was mainly more of the same. Except that Nathan McFain was gleefully hinting that there was something “real special” about
this
mammoth. No, he couldn't say exactly what because he had a handshake agreement with Dr. Moses Silver that the scientists would have a chance to publish their findings before the newspapers learned what was afoot here. But it would be big news, he said. Real big. Moon chuckled. The rancher was a born promoter. The policeman's eyes wandered to the photograph over the article. Nathan McFain was standing outside a large tent, flanked by the little bespectacled scientist and his daughter. According to the caption, the tent had been set up to protect the excavation. And provide some warmth for the scientists who expected to work throughout the winter. Dr. Silver, Moon surmised, was evidently quite serious about the publishing agreement or the
Drum
reporter would surely have gotten a shot of the bones that had been uncovered so far. And then something in the background caught Moon's eye. It was a small, wiry-looking man. Dressed in overalls. He had a bandage on his ear. Even with the scraggly beard neatly trimmed, there was no doubt.

This was Horace Flye, in the flesh.

It looked like the Arkansas traveler had conned his way into a job moving dirt. Moon wondered whether the Silvers had any idea they'd hired a slicker. And whether the child was being looked after properly. The McFain ranch—excepting possibly a few pilfered yards of pasture—was outside SUPD jurisdiction. And it wasn't any of the tribe's business who got hired to dig up McFain's mammoth bones. But it wouldn't hurt to pay a social call on Nathan McFain. Maybe find out what Horace Flye was up to. And the chief of police would be
pleased if he thought Moon was sneaking around the Navajo's pasture looking for signs of fresh postholes. Well, let Roy Severo think whatever he wanted to think.

Moon parked the big Blazer under the skeletonous limbs of a hundred-year-old cottonwood. And then zipped his sheepskin jacket in anticipation of the gusting November breeze that kicked up dust among the sparse clumps of frost-killed grass in Nathan McFain's front yard. The Ute policeman sat for a moment and looked things over. There was a familiar old yellow Chevy van parked beside Nathan's new pickup. A faded bumper sticker said
DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE
. So Vanessa was home to see her father. For a normal family, it wouldn't be surprising that a daughter would come home for a visit. But Nathan and Vanessa were just about two notches on the far side of normal. Whenever she dropped in, there would be uneasy hugs exchanged, an unspoken truce. They would manage to behave for maybe a week. Then some small issue would start a chain reaction. She'd do or say something to start a fire in the old man's belly. He'd open his big mouth and light her fuse. She'd explode. There would be a massive flare-up, harsh words exchanged, and Vanessa would roar off in her Chevy van. Sometimes she was away for months. Rumor was, she'd had a drinking problem.

Seemed like everybody had one kind of problem or another.

It looked like Nathan McFain's dude ranch was doing a brisk off-season business. Automobiles were parked in the graveled driveways at several of the log cabins on the pine-studded hillside. Above the cabins, on the long spine of the double-humped hogback called Buffalo Saddle Ridge, Moon could see the edge of the RV campground. And the end of a small, beetle-shaped camp-trailer. Horace Flye's rig, of course. He couldn't see the old Dodge pickup from this angle, but it'd be there. Moon shut down the Blazer's heater, switched off the ignition, and got out.

Far above the small valley where the ranch headquarters was situated, the elfin girl in the camp-trailer was still dressed in
her warm flannel pajamas. She raised her father's Navy binoculars to her pale blue eyes. Her small, stubby fingers strained to turn the focus knob. She watched the tall policeman cross the yard toward the ranch house.

For an instant, the big man turned his head and looked directly at her!

She shuddered with the delicious, delightful, fanciful fear that only a child can know.

“The Wuff,” Butter Flye murmured, “… the Big
Bad
Wuff.”

Vanessa McFain opened the front door before the visitor had time to mount the chiseled stone steps. Her bronze hair was done up in a single long braid. She was tall for a woman, and snaky-thin. Her slim hips barely held up her faded jeans, which were stuffed into fancy bull-hide cowboy boots. This one had grown up on a ranch and could sit a frisky horse with the best of them. She had turned into a fine-looking woman.

She gave him a crooked smile. “Hello, big man.”

That's what she'd called Moon back when she was a teenager. “Hiya, sleepwalker,” he shot back without thinking. When she blushed, Moon wished he could swallow the thoughtless response. It had been almost exactly six years ago—on a chilly September evening. A panicked Nathan McFain had called the county sheriff to report his teenage daughter missing. No, he didn't know how long she'd been gone. He was a heavy sleeper, had just got up around 2
A.M
. to relieve his bladder. And noticed Vannie's bedroom door was open—and her bed empty. She wasn't anywhere in the house.

All the local troops had been called out, including volunteers from the Ignacio town police and Southern Ute PD. The Ute policeman had participated in a search that lasted all night. At dawn. Charlie Moon had found her, not a half mile from the western border of her father's ranch. Vanessa had been stumbling about, her nightdress torn, feet bleeding. She'd been cold to the bone, and incoherent. He'd bundled her up in his long coat and hauled her back to the ranch on his horse. Vanessa had been mortified that the big Ute cop had found her wandering around practically naked. The physician's
diagnosis had been sleepwalking, complicated by hypothermia and miscellaneous trauma. A dumb reason, she thought, for causing such a big commotion. And it was no secret that Vanessa—even as a teenager—had a drinking problem. One of the state cops had found an empty wine bottle in her room.

Attempting to erase the blunder, Moon reached out to take the hand she offered. “Vanessa… I didn't know you'd be here.”

She smiled, exposing a dazzling row of perfect teeth, reminding him that she'd once had a mouthful of braces. When Vanessa smiled, she could light up a man's day. “Pleased to see me?”

“Sure.” He took off his dusty black Stetson and tapped it on his knee. Moon wondered if she was still drinking. Hoped she wasn't.

“I'm sober,” she said as if she'd read his mind.

“So'm I.” He nodded toward the Blazer. “That's the only way the chief′11 let me drive the squad car.”

This brought a tinkling laugh from her lips. She'd had some bad experiences with men. But Charlie Moon had always been so funny. And funny men didn't ever hit you.

He was, though not staring, giving her the once-over. Another twenty pounds would look good on her. She was mostly bones. Nice-looking set of bones, though.

Vanessa knew she was being inspected. And liked it. “So what'd you come out here for? To see the bones?”

If the dark man could have blushed, he would have. “The what?”

“The
old
bones,” she said with a knowing smirk. He was squirming. Sort of cute, too. If a man just shy of seven feet tall could be called cute.

“Ahh… sort of. I stopped by to say hello to your father.”

As if on cue, Nathan McFain's broad, bearded face appeared behind his daughter. “For gosh sakes, Vannie—either ask Charlie in or go outside and do your gabbin'. You're let-tin' out all the confounded heat.”

Vanessa pretended to be dismayed. “Daddy still insists on calling me ‘Vannie.' Like he did when I was a little girl.”

“Vannie's still my little girl.” Nathan winked at the policeman. “Even if she
is
tall enough to eat leaves off a treetop.”

“The real reason he doesn't call me by my right name,” she said, “is he
can't.
Daddy gets tongue-tied with words that have more than two syllables.”

“Smart-ass kid,” the old man muttered under his breath.

She looked up imploringly at the Ute. “I'm not all that tall, am I, Charlie?”

Moon's response was mock-sober. “An experienced police officer learns to steer clear of family disputes.”

Nathan chuckled; his belly shook.

“Men,” she said to the ceiling, and turned away to lead her guest down a short hallway.

Charlie Moon followed the slender woman and her hulking, round-shouldered father into the warm parlor. It was a large room filled with heavy, dark furniture. Tons of varnished wood and polished leather. The far wall was dominated by a massive speckled-granite fireplace, anchored on a red brick hearth. The mantelpiece was a twelve-foot slab of smoke-stained redwood, a good six inches thick. Over the mantel was the head of a trophy antelope the old man had killed on the New Mexico plains south of Raton. The animal watched Moon through inquisitive eyes of amber glass. The Ute policeman unzipped his jacket and warmed his hands near the snapping yellow flames that were rapidly consuming an armload of split piñon.

Nathan McFain seated himself in a massive Spanish chair. It creaked under his weight. He began to fill his battered brier pipe. When his daughter was at home, he avoided chewing tobacco. She said the smell of it, and the sight of him spitting into a coffee can—well, it made her nauseous. But she knew her father had to have his tobacco one way or another. The pipe was one of those uneasy compromises that neither side was altogether pleased with. “Well, Charlie… you come out here to see me,” Nathan made a sideways glance at his daughter, “or you come courtin' Vannie?”

Though watching Moon's face for some response to this notion, she shook her head in mock dismay. “You'll have to excuse him, Charlie. They say old men's brains shrink. Dad's
evidently started shriveling when he was about forty; must be down to about the size of a walnut.”

“If Vannie'd put on some weight,” McFain grumped, “I expect I'd be beatin' the young men off with a stick. As it is …”

Moon noticed that her eyes were getting that flat reptilian look like a snake about to strike. A warning sign the mouthy old man had missed. “Matter of fact,” the Ute interrupted, “the pleasure of Vanessa's company is an unexpected bonus.” This earned him a bittersweet smile from the young woman. “Nathan, I been reading in the
Drum
about those old bones you found in your pasture. Thought maybe I'd drop by and have a look… if it's all right with you.”

Nathan McFain touched a lighted match to the pipe bowl and puffed until the fragrant fuel was cherry-red. “I don't mind. 'Course, you'll have to get past those eggheads who're in charge of the digging. The daughter—that's Delia—she's not such a bad sort. But her old man's a real hardnose.”

Vanessa roiled her big eyes. “She has my sympathy. And empathy.”

The potbellied rancher studiously ignored his daughter. “See, me and this university professor, we got us a deal. Moses Silver digs up all the bones—and makes sure they're preserved right and all. Soon as we know how much is under the ground—hell, there might be a half dozen of them monsters died in the same place—I'll finish my plans to put up a permanent structure to protect the bones. It'll be a fine museum, where folks can come and see 'em. It'll be real educational.”

At a tuition of about five bucks a head, Moon estimated.

“Educational my… my foot,” Vanessa said. “It's another one of his moneymaking schemes.”

Unmoved by this unwarranted attack on entrepreneurial capitalism, McFain continued. “This Moses Silver and his daughter, they'll write up fancy articles for them highbrow scientific journals. But all the bones,” the rancher tapped his pipe bowl on the scarred surface of a small table by his chair, “they stay right here. On my property. And these ain't just your everyday mammoth bones, Charlie. These bones is
special.”
He waited for the Ute to ask what was so special about these particular bones. Moon didn't take the bait.

“Of course, I'm actually not supposed to tell you
why
these bones is so special. I got this agreement with Professor Silver… he's the only one who can make any
public
statements about the bones.” If Charlie Moon would just show a little interest, he'd tell him about the great age of the fossils. And butcher marks on the leg bone. Why, this would prove that people had come to America twenty thousand years before all those smart-ass professors had thought!

Charlie Moon had little interest in the paleontologist's scientific papers or Nathan McFain's plans for a museum. The Ute policeman had come to the ranch to see if Nathan's new employee was behaving himself. More likely, Horace Flye was planning some mischief. But the old curmudgeon was in a talking mood. So maybe he could get Nathan to mention hiring the drifter from Arkansas. “All that digging… must be a lot of hard work, for just one elderly man and his daughter.”