The Old Gray Wolf (22 page)

Do not misinterpret this query as a literal one. Right off the bat, the shaman knew
what
was in the bedroom with her. Well, more or less. Any wee-hours visitor who was so rude as to awaken a bone-tired old lady with a low, mournful wail was—without a doubt—an inconsiderate spirit who had barged in to deliberately disturb her rest. Had Mrs. Perika expressed her query more explicitly, she would have said, “Oooh …
who
now?”

Another pitiful, keening moan.

Recalling the
pitukupf
's prediction, Daisy reached a reasonable conclusion:
This must be the dead person he told me about.
Which realization raised a regret:
If I'd kept my mouth shut, the haunt might've thought I was sound asleep and deaf as a brick and gone away to pester some other poor soul.
That ploy had worked before, but it was too late now. Giving up the blatant fakery, the sly tribal elder cracked one eyelid. What did she see? A filmy, amorphous haze hovering at her bedside.
I might as well get this over with.
“Okay, Casper—who're you and why're you aggravating a tired old lady who never did you any harm?”

The response was somewhat garbled, but Daisy managed to pick up the gist of what was being said. “You don't know who you are?”

The apparition popped up a knoblike head, and nodded it.

The shaman was not surprised, either by the instantly produced noggin or the spirit's identity issues As often as not, the recently dead drifted about in a state of total confusion. Poor things didn't know who they were, where they were, who they had awakened in the middle of the night—or even the fact that they were deceased. The detached souls merely wanted a warm somebody to talk to, and had probably already visited dozens of unresponsive folk until they happened upon a person who was cursed with the “gift” of seeing dead people and hearing their oftentimes-indistinct speech. Which, like it or not, did place a certain civic responsibility on those so talented. Which was one reason why Daisy pushed herself up on an elbow and launched into a explanation of the hard facts of life: “The first thing you got to get through your toadstool head is that you're
dead
!” She was about to enlarge upon this educational theme when her artful descriptor (“toadstool”) reminded Daisy Perika of the threat made by one Hester “Toadie” Tillman.
I ought to have guessed right off.
“Do you remember how you died?”

The knob on the presumably muddleheaded specter nodded.

“Well don't just stand there like a big turnip, tell me!” Daisy listened to the speech that was improving with practice.
Aha! I thought so.
“So, you died inside an automobile, eh?”

The knobby protuberance nodded again, this time with noticeable fervor. The unseen mouth provided further horrid details, rounding the lurid narrative out by asserting that she was still trapped inside the vehicle, and if Daisy didn't find a way to get her out, she'd rot there like some dead animal.

“No, Toadie—you're all mixed up.” Daisy shook her head. “You're
not
still inside that pickup. I know that for a fact, because Danny Bignight was there when you croaked, and he watched some people pull you out of the truck and carry you over to the ambulance.” She scowled at the annoying pestilence that had invaded her bedroom. “No, don't shake your silly-looking head at me—listen to what I'm telling you! About an hour after you'd passed on, Danny Bignight showed up at my house by the mouth of
Cañón del Espíritu
and told me all about it.” She paused to suck in a breath. “Danny also told me what you said you'd do if I didn't show up at your funeral and bawl my eyes out over you being dead.” Daisy shook her finger at the rude intruder. “I didn't really mean what I said to Danny Bignight about spitting on your grave, but I never liked you very much when you were alive, Toadie—and I'm liking you less with every minute that passes. So you just haul your big butt out of here and—” Pause. “
What
did you say?”

The spirit repeated her querulous complaint.

“You're cold?” Daisy snorted. “Well so am I, from the neck up.” Pulling the quilt to her chin, she wagged the finger again. “Now listen to me and do as I say or I'll go get a two-gallon bucket of ice-cold well water and wet you down with it.” The senior citizen chuckled. “Your rotten old teeth'll chatter so hard they'll all fall out of your gums and onto the floor.”

Though it seems doubtful that amorphous apparitions have decayed teeth to worry about, the cold-bath threat did seem to get the uninvited spirit's undivided attention.

Sensing that she had the Big Mo (considerable momentum), Daisy did not let up. “Now here's the deal—first of all, you go back to the Ignacio Cemetery, where your body is buried.” To assist in this journey, she pointed in a southerly direction. “And when you get there, eyeball every grave marker till you spot a cheap slab of limestone that says ‘Toadie Tillman Sleeps Here' on it. Then, slip back into your nice, comfy coffin and
stay
there!”

Was Daisy's helpful advice received with gratitude? No.

The dismal spirit let out an awful, high-pitched howl—which spine-jerking shriek was abruptly interrupted in midscreech by a series of gasping-choking-gurgling-gaggings—the macabre effect suggesting a hyperactive banshee being choked to death by an enraged member of the Granite Creek County Noise Abatement League.

Was Mrs. Perika startled? You bet.

The tribal elder lurched like an anteater whose yard-long tongue has just licked a tasty six-legged delicacy off a pulsating electric fence. The unnerved old soul was also vexed, provoked, and chagrined at this uncalled-for outburst from the haunt.
If you had a neck, I'd grab it and strangle you myself!
But even Daisy Perika's hard heart was touched by the specter's unfeigned display of abject misery. After a roll of her beady black eyes and a wistful sigh for bygone days when a tired woman could enjoy a good night's rest without having to wake up and counsel idiot dead people, the tribal elder added this comforting observation: “Now listen to what I say, Toadie—I know what I'm talking about because a journeyman plumber told me this years ago.” When making a pitch, it often helps to quote a licensed expert.) “Colorado gets plenty cold, but it ain't Alaska.” Daisy pointed at the floor. “Six feet down, our water pipes don't ever freeze. D'you know why?”

Judging from its blank expression, the specter did not have the least inkling of a clue.

About to provide one, Daisy jutted her chin. “Because even in the dead of winter, the ground is toasty
warm
down there. I guarantee it—you settle down into your pine box, you'll never shiver again.”

Whether or not this confident assertion persuaded the spirit to follow Daisy's advice must—at least for the moment—remain problematic. What can be stated with certainty is this: for whatever reason, the howling-gasping-choking-gurgling-gagging apparition gave up the game—and vanished from the elderly citizen's bedroom.

Charlie Moon's exasperated auntie collapsed onto her pillow.
Oh, I'm so glad
that's
over.

Which would be a fitting and proper conclusion to this peculiar little anecdote.

But it was not. (Over.)

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

THE HUMDRUM BEGINNING OF A PARTICULARLY EVENTFUL DAY

And perhaps the longest day in the lives of several of the principals, though for others it would be dramatically foreshortened.

It began innocently enough in the chief of police's lonely bachelor home, with a gloomy Scott Parris dipping a tablespoon into a cold bowl of skim milk where squares of a high-fiber, factory-compacted cereal-like substance floated like debris left over after the sinking of a Lilliputian barge loaded with thumbnail-size bales of hay. Munching with a scowl, the food critic delivered his verdict on the victuals:
If this healthy crap tasted ten times better, it'd be almost as good as soggy cardboard
.

With that pithy observation, we shall leave the sour-faced gourmand to complain about his nutritious breakfast. A downer is no way to begin the day. We shall pay a morning call on a salt-of-the-earth gathering that appreciates the day's first chow-down.

But for those dyspeptics who have no appetite for rare-cooked flesh of uncertain origin, thickish spare-parts stew, and black iron pots a-bubble with overdoses of trouble—be ye forewarned that
here endeth the humdrum beginning
. (What to do? Withdraw to some sunny spot where happy little bluebirds sing, and peruse a delightful chapter or two from
The Wind in the Willows.
)

A
FEW
DOZEN
MILES
TO
THE
NORTHWEST

As might be expected, the day's first meal was mighty fine in the Columbine kitchen. (The formal dining room was used for lunch, supper, and high-stakes poker games.)

Charlie Moon was seated at one end of the rectangular table, with Daisy Perika and Sarah positioned at his left and right elbows (respectively). Whereabouts the lady who had arrived in the Bronco? The guest whom the hospitable rancher had rescued from the noisy Holiday Inn was seated beside the Ute-Papago orphan.

Halfway through her breakfast, the woman who preferred to be called Miss Whysper (or
Missy
Whysper when addressed by Charlie Moon) paused to touch a paper napkin to her lips. (Daintily.) “My, that is very tasty.”

Moon returned a smile and a nod. “This is what we call a light cowboy breakfast. With a platter of this grub tucked under your belt, you'll be ready to rope calves, shoe horses, and bale alfalfa till lunchtime—when we turn out a serious meal.”

Knowing what was expected of her, the lady laughed. “I don't know that I'll be up to any roping, shoeing, or baling—but this meal will be sufficient to last me all day.”

Sarah Frank was trying awfully hard to appear cheerful, but forcing her unhappy face into a smile was an exquisitely painful process. All the poor girl could think about was Charlie Moon's upcoming wedding to pretty Patsy Poynter—and how disgustingly
happy
the pair would be together.
I hope all her blond hair falls out and she gets fat as a cow and Charlie catches a bad case of—
But, angry and vindictive as she was, Sarah was incapable of wishing any harm to the love of her young life. Not yet.

When Daisy Perika paused in the salting of her eggs to look for the pepper shaker, she happened to glance across the table at the white woman who was enjoying Columbine hospitality. The old woman frowned.
Well, what's this?
As the
matukach
woman chewed or swallowed or spoke, her pallid face (as seen through the shaman's eyes) looked like cold, dead flesh that was attempting to mimic the real McCoy. As Daisy caught a glimpse of a white skull under the taut gray skin, the tribal elder managed to stifle a shudder, but she could not suppress the macabre image that had triggered it—or the certainty that …
This white woman won't live to see the sun come up again
.

Feeling the aged Indian woman's odd stare, and spotting the salt shaker Daisy was setting aside, Miss Whysper correctly deduced what the tribal elder was looking for. She picked up the pepper shaker beside her coffee cup and passed it across the table to Charlie Moon's aunt. “Is this what you're looking for?”

Daisy Perika's right hand instinctively reached for the proffered object. As she took it, the shaman's warm fingertips touched the houseguest's cold fingers. As young, pale skin contacted its wrinkled, dark counterpart, it was as if a charge of electricity sizzled between them—and with this brief coupling Daisy
saw
someone who
wasn't there
. Eerie enough. But what made this experience
exceedingly
strange was what Daisy knew beyond a shadow of a doubt:
I'm looking at a dangerous man that this
matukach
woman has never met before—and I'm seeing him through her eyes
.

It was like watching a ninety-year-old silent movie. As the frames flickered by, Daisy saw a twilight black-and-white image of the sinister character who'd do Charlie's guest in—a dark figure in a flat-brimmed hat. The desperado in the grade-B film looked almost as skinny as her nephew, but not so tall. To blind herself to the bloody scene she knew was forthcoming, Daisy closed her eyes. This stratagem served only to make the vision crystal clear.

*   *   *

The heel of his hand resting on the butt of a holstered sidearm, the slender figure approached. There was an empty black holster on the gaunt man's hip—a drawn pistol in his hand.

“No—stop!” Daisy snapped.

On this curt and authoritative command, the moving-picture image froze, faded, and vaporized—the vision ending before the shooting began.

*   *   *

Daisy Perika opened her eyes to see Charlie Moon, Sarah Frank, and Miss Whysper all staring at her in mild surprise—the latter as through a
dead woman's eyes.

Sarah reached across the table to put her smooth hand on Daisy's trembling paw. “Are you all right?”

The object of the girl's sympathy nodded, but Daisy could not tear her gaze from the white woman's sickly gray face. “I'm okay.”
But that one ain't—she'll be cold meat before tomorrow's sun shines over the mountains.
She was tempted to warn her nephew's guest, but …
She wouldn't believe me.
Nor would Charlie or Sarah.
They'd all three figure me for a crazy old crank.
And even if they did believe …
Telling her won't change what's bound to happen.
Which led her to the conclusion that …
I might as well keep my mouth shut.
Even so, Daisy could not escape the nagging sense that she was shirking her responsibility. But the woman who occasionally caught glimpses of the future reminded herself that …
From time to time I've had a vision that turned out to be dead wrong.
This sturdy-looking white woman might live to be a hundred years old. Case closed.