The Night Visitor (5 page)

To cover a laugh, the policeman quickly faked a cough.

Daisy fumbled in her purse and found a handkerchief; she blew her nose. “And another thing—I think I'm allergic to Mr. Hair-Bag.”

“Zig-Zag,”
Sarah muttered hopelessly.

“When you brought that animal into my house before, seemed like I never could stop sneezing and scratching.” Daisy Perika sensed that her nephew was about to say something, and continued quickly: “Tell you what, young lady. We'll try it for just a few days. See how it works out.”

Sarah shook her finger in the cat's impassive face. “Now don't you make Aunt Daisy sneeze.” She reached over to hug the old woman.

“Hmmmf,” Daisy said gruffly. The half-Papago child would be a great nuisance. The cat would always be underfoot, whining at her ankles, wanting scraps from the table. But then… she certainly wouldn't be lonely. And there was the support money—almost as much as she got in her monthly Social Security check. Not—she quickly reminded herself and the Almighty—that this act of charity had anything whatever to do with money.

Nathan McFain was walking his fence line when he saw Charlie Moon's old pickup—trailed by rolling billows of yellow dust—rumble by on the gravel road two hundred yards to the south. The rancher paused and pulled at his tobacco-stained white beard. Nathan made it his business to know much of his neighbor's business. The Ute policeman came by once every week to take his aged aunt to town so she could buy her provisions. Nathan pulled a fat watch from his pocket and squinted at the thin blue hands. Charlie and Daisy were running
a little behind schedule. He found a package of Red Man chewing tobacco in his jacket pocket and bit off a chaw. The rancher stood there for a full minute, chewing thoughtfully. Then, to punctuate the end of this pause, spat on a fence post. He was missing two lower front teeth. A dribble of brown spittle ran down his chin… and onto the whiskers where it added to the brown patina that neatly divided the white beard.

The rancher, whose bent posture and slow walk made him seem much older than his sixty-two years, plodded along. He pushed at loose cedar posts, tugged at rusted strands of barbed wire. Made mental notes of which repairs should be completed before the deep snows came, and those that could wait until after the April thaw. He was approaching a sandy basin in his pasture, shaded from the late afternoon sun by the brow of a sandstone bluff that rose steeply a few yards beyond the fence. The land on the west side of the barbed wire belonged to the Southern Ute tribe. In fact, most of the real estate bordering his ninety-acre holdings was a part of the reservation. His great-grandfather had bought this parcel from a Ute sheepman back in the 1890s. There had been boundary disputes ever since. Nathan McFain, who was one-quarter Navajo on his mother's side, liked to say that he mistrusted all the Utes twenty-five percent of the time—and twenty-five percent of the Utes all the time—as was his birthright.

A Ute elder who heard this insult had responded that one-quarter Navajo blood was more than enough to infect the whole man. And on top of that, the other seventy-five percent of Nathan's blood was
matukach.
So Utes were obliged to mistrust Nathan McFain one hundred and ten percent of the time. And not only that, he had added, the bearded, gap-toothed man was ugly as three billy goats.

On an occasion some years ago, the rancher had suspected the Utes of rolling several basalt boulders that served as boundary markers onto his land. By at least a yard. Maybe two. He wasn't absolutely sure, of course. But a man had to take steps to protect his property from illegal encroachment. So now and again he'd roll the marker boulders in the direction of the Ute holdings. Just a yard. Maybe two.

But within a few months, he was certain the boulders had
been rolled back toward him. Damn conniving Utes. So he'd roll 'em westward again.

The rancher had finally tired of that game and put in a barbed-wire fence.

Nathan was a dour, unhappy soul. An unfortunate man who disproved the adage that you got out of life what you put into it. He had attempted to raise a family. His wife had died when the child was born, some twenty-odd years ago. And his daughter—though he loved her—had been a peck of trouble. For decades, he had labored to bring forth a good living from his acres. He had tried sheep. The hateful creatures conspired among themselves to come down with dreadful diseases unknown to veterinary science, and died by the dozens. They did this just to spite him. He'd tried cattle, and they had waxed fat. But beef prices fell through the floor and into the basement. He planted apple orchards. The flesh of the fruit was sweet enough, but the skins were like leather. And there was the great flock of strutting peacocks whose feathers were to be sold to the Chinese. That was a most embarrassing affair, and it was better not to bring the subject up with Nathan McFain.

Determined to make a few dollars out of his land, he moved from one questionable scheme to another. Most recently, Nathan had converted his holdings into a dude ranch with a half dozen overly tame horses and “scenic riding trails.” He had sold ten acres of prime Piedra riverbank land and used the cash to build a row of cute little log cabins that would attract the well-heeled city folk.

But alas, the dudes did not come.

One could make a detailed list of his other failed business ventures, but it was altogether too dismal.

And now—buried in an accumulation of failures—Nathan McFain sometimes felt as if he already lay in the grave. Waiting for the somber men with spades to throw the sod o'er him. But he did not give up entirely. Partially because of an inborn stubbornness. And also because Nathan knew that he was smarter than his more prosperous neighbors. And he worked harder than those slackers. So they must be lucky. On dismal nights when he could not sleep, he grudgingly admitted that it was better to be lucky than to be smart.

What he needed, he told himself ten times a day, was a bit of luck.

As the rancher slowly made his way along the fence, he found himself at the edge of the low, sandy area under the bluff. With last spring's winds, this unsightly pockmark on the face of his pasture had earned the title “blow.” The gusts had carried away several inches of loose topsoil. Grass was uprooted; even the stability of the fence was threatened. From the corner of his eye, Nathan caught a glimpse of the skinny young fellow who'd wandered onto the ranch just yesterday, half-starved and eager to work. Jimson Beugmann was up by the bam, tinkering with the old bulldozer. Fellow was deaf as a man who'd been dead a year, but he could read your lips. And this new hand seemed to have a knack with machinery. Maybe he should get Beugmann to fire up the 'dozer and push some soil up against the wobbly fence posts. Like beads on a string, one thought touched another. As long as Beugmann had the dozer over here, he could scoop out enough dirt to make a usable pond for the stock. Holding onto a shaky post, Nathan McFain paused at the edge of the shallow basin.

He hadn't seen it coming. But he heard it… the low, whispering moaning.

The whirlwind moved across the pasture, leaning to the left, then the right… like an intoxicated giant, reeling and stumbling his way home.

The thing was whipping up bucketfuls of bile-yellow dust.

Forty feet high, twisting winds brewed in some witch's stew-pot, and it was coming right at him. Nathan planted his feet, scowled at the thing, and stood his ground. Nothing but some wind and sand, the
matukach
part of his mind said. It'd pass by. But the one-quarter of him that was Navajo knew better. This was a devil-spirit, sent to torment him. Perhaps to bring on a fatal sickness …

It continued to move toward the sandy basin.

When the twister's toe touched the sands, all hell broke loose. The solitary moaning became a heavy, communal roar… a company of fiends hatched in a hideous nightmare—eager to rip flesh from bone. Sprigs of dry rabbit brush
were uprooted and shredded. Pebbles flew like bullets. The whirling winds gained strength.

Nathan threw his forearm in front of his face, like an old pugilist warding off a blow.

Yards from him, the dust devil paused. And churned.

McFain backed against the fence, heedless of the barbed wire. Until a pointed piece of steel pricked the skin over his spine… and an electric signal flashed an absurd message to his brain.
Old man, you are impaled.
The sand and grit was driven against one side of his head; he grabbed the brim of his canvas hat.

Still, the whirlwind did not move.

Nathan blinked, felt the grit of sand between his teeth and in his eyes. The Navajo in him prayed for this evil thing to depart.

And then the winds began to subside.

The roar gradually fell to a whisper.

And died.

He spat sand from his mouth. “Damn,” he said. The old man attempted to wipe the grit from his watering eyes. He blinked. Beneath the place where the whirlwind had stood was an almost perfectly circular depression.

And in the center of this depression was something else.

Something like a thick brown finger protruding from the matrix of clay and pebbles. In his unhappy state of mind, it was perceived as an obscene, mocking gesture. He'd once cleared a few scraggly trees from this end of the pasture… those damn winds must've dug up an old juniper root. Nathan trudged grimly along the gritty bottom of the blow, toward the intruding presence. He paused to stare at the thing.

Nope. Wasn't a dead tree root.

Odd, though …

He squatted. And squinted.

Looked like some kind of bone. A cylindrical bone, slightly curved. And pointed on the end. Sort of like a cow's horn… but way too big for that. Not an old buffalo horn, neither. Wrong shape. He pulled off a scuffed leather glove and touched the thing. Scratched the surface with a horny fingernail. Funny. It had the look and feel of… stone. His
heart began to thump under his ribs. This thing was old. Really old.

Nathan McFain squatted there for some minutes, caressing the ancient tusk with his callused fingertips. The gears under his skull were spinning in overdrive. Under this thing, he assured himself, there would be more bones. Most likely a whole skeleton of some great beast. Maybe even more than one… a whole herd of 'em. This man was not in the habit of entertaining small thoughts. Nathan McFain's visions were invariably grand. This latest fanciful picture began to form in his mind. He saw a paved driveway leading to an ample parking lot. There were redwood picnic tables nestled in the shade of cottonwoods. A fine steel building erected over the reassembled skeleton of whatever wonderful beast that lay buried beneath his feet. There were rosebushes planted along the paved walk to the door. And a large, tasteful sign on the building.

Mounted on the entrance door was a brass plaque. Though it was much smaller than the sign, he could see it plainly.

Let's see, figure a hundred cars a week, average of two adults and two children per car, that would come to… my goodness! And there would be soft drinks and candy bars for the tourists. T-shirts and pennants and bumper stickers. Plastic skeletons of dinosaurs and limestone seashell fossils and
whatnot. Some Indian pottery, of course. One hundred percent markup would be fair enough for a first-class joint. There would be tax problems with so much income; it would be necessary to hire an accountant. For the first time since he'd broke ground for the McFain Dude Ranch's bunkhouse cabins, Nathan was a happy man. The rancher was so elated that he did a heavy-footed little jig on the floor of the sandy basin. He was very careful not to stomp on the precious thing that protruded from the earth.

Exhausted from his exertions, he sat down on the rim of the blow and thought about what to do. First—to make sure the fossil tusk didn't get broke—he'd shovel some loose dirt over it. Then, tell Beugmann that the new stock tank could be dug somewhere else. Sure. Farther up the pasture, close to the barn. Then, he'd drive up to Granite Creek and visit Rocky Mountain Polytechnic. Tell 'em he wanted to talk with one of them professors. The kind that digs up old bones.

H
ORACE
F
LYE FOCUSED
pale blue eyes on the rearview mirror. What he saw—over the bed of his aged pickup truck—was the blunt face of the camping trailer. He braked gradually and pulled off the asphalt, easing to a slow stop under a flickering neon sign. Butter, back there in the trailer, was most likely sound asleep. And if he stopped too hard—like he'd done back in Pagosa—she'd likely fall out of the bed again. And yell her head off at him. Butter had a temper, just like her mamma. The bewhiskered man balanced a pair of plastic-rimmed reading glasses on his nose, and squinted at the Colorado road map.
Hmmm. Looks like I'm on some kind of Indian reservation. Close to some little town called Ignacio. Maybe even in it already.
The Arkansas man scratched at his whiskered chin, which itched. A good omen.
Maybe it's about time for my luck to change.

A sudden gust of wind bent a mountain ash sapling and kicked an empty Coors six-pack carton across the parking lot.

He buttoned up his grease-stained denim jacket, jammed a battered felt hat onto his balding head, then got out and slammed the pickup door. Horace saw the white cloud of his breath: his teeth began to chatter. The weary traveler walked stiff-legged back to the trailer and slammed his palm against the aluminum wall. He grinned uneasily when her pudgy face appeared in the window. “Sweetie, I gotta go in here for a few minutes,” he yelled at the pale countenance. “You just watch the TV for a little while.”

The face didn't respond. Just stared back sullenly.

Horace Flye nodded—as if Butter was a compliant daughter who would do as her father said. This self-delusion accomplished. Horace turned on his heel.