Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (24 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries
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Hammond’s look might have pierced steel. “No, Dr. Stewart. I want someone who didn’t know Dr. Robertson, and I want my ERT team here.”
“Your what?”
“My Evidence Recovery Team.”
“Ed?” Nichols asked. “Did I just hear you right? You’re going to authorize them to dig?”
Hammond continued chewing his lip for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, Sam. Hell, maybe Brown is right. I don’t buy this witch bullshit, but maybe the answers are here. The one thing we’re damn short on is motive. You told me that yourself.” He cast a speculative glance at Dusty that sent a cold shiver down his back. “Sam, let’s see where this leads. Find some archaeologist who didn’t know Dr. Robertson and keep a sharp eye on him while he digs this thing.”
The wind whipped Maureen’s long braid over her shoulder as she stepped forward and cocked her head. “Excuse me, Agent Hammond, but where are you going to find an archaeologist who didn’t know Dale Emerson Robertson?”
“Surely there are archaeologists in the world who didn’t know him. Pull in somebody from England,” Hammond replied.
“England!” Dusty objected. “What the hell would a European archaeologist know about southwestern witchcraft? That would be like dropping me into a ninth-century Christian church and telling me to find
signs of ancient Christian magic. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what I was looking for!”
“Archaeology is a very, very small world,” Maureen told Hammond. “First of all, you do need a southwestern specialist, somebody knowledgeable in local tribal religions. Secondly, Dale knew everybody. You couldn’t even go to Africa to find someone who didn’t know Dale. Think of it in terms of investigating one of your deputy directors: The man is a legend and known by everyone in your Bureau. You simply can’t avoid the entanglements of reputation and personality.”
Hammond stared at her. “Then who could do the best job?”
“Me,” Dusty insisted doggedly. Anger had momentarily replaced his grief.
Maureen shook her head. “No, Dusty, you’re too close to the case. I know you wouldn’t bias the data, but there are people who would accuse you of it.”
Rupert said, “Agent Hammond, I’ll give you a list of qualified archaeologists who hold federal antiquities permits. You can choose whomever you wish.”
“Good.” Hammond headed for the tape, looking half frozen. “We’ll run background checks and make our decision.”
“Wait!” Dusty ducked under the tape and followed Hammond. “You can’t just pick someone from a list. You might get a lab rat who’s never had dirt under his fingernails, and who wouldn’t know a feature if it—”
Hammond turned irritated eyes on Dusty, and asked in a cold, probing voice: “Is there a reason you don’t want an objective scientist to dig this site?”
Dusty felt a keen stab of anger. “Dale
raised
me, Hammond. He took me in when I didn’t have anyone else. I want to make sure the excavation is done correctly!”
“Dusty?” Maureen called worriedly from behind.
But it was Rupert who clamped a hard hand on Dusty’s shoulder and yanked him back, saying calmly
to Hammond, “Cut Dusty a break, Mr. Hammond. This is hard on all of us, hardest on Dusty.”
Hammond’s gaze still bored into Dusty in an attempt to dissect his soul for innocence or guilt. He didn’t give an inch.
Maureen took Dusty’s other arm, and with Rupert’s help led him away. When they were ten paces down the gravel path, Maureen said, “Good Lord, Dusty, why did you do that?”
“They’re never going to find the killer if they pick some idiot to excavate this site!”
But that wasn’t it, and he knew, it. They thought he might have killed Dale, and the notion left him swimming in confusion, hurt, and anger.
Sam Nichols called from behind, “We’re not paid to be nice, just to find the bad guy.”
“You’re not going to find him without my help, Nichols,” Dusty insisted.
Nichols walked toward them, and turned to fix his good eye on Hammond, who picked his way down the slope on his slippery city shoes. “Don’t underestimate the Bureau,” he said. “We do have specialists in other cultures.”
“Yeah?” Dusty countered and shook off Maureen’s and Rupert’s hands to turn around. “Do you have a specialist who knows exactly why Carter Hawsworth would want to
personally
study Navajo witchcraft? Does your expert understand the twisted psychology of a want-to-be witch?”
Nichols squinted his good eye. “Who said Hawsworth was a want-to-be witch?”
When Dusty just stood there breathing hard, Nichols turned to Rupert. “I’ll be looking forward to that list, Mr. Brown.”
“I’ll have it to you within the hour,” Rupert promised, and gave Dusty the same look he had when he’d bailed Dusty and Lupe out of jail at the ages of sixteen—that “I’ll kill you later” look.
Nichols nodded and started back for Hammond.
Rupert said, “Come on, Dusty, drive me back to my office. I’ll spring for a hot cup of coffee; then you can go out and piss off more FBI guys while I make some phone calls.”
 
 
STONE GHOST PROPPED his walking stick and leaned against the cold stone wall to listen. Her voice was sweet and high. The words of the song drifted through the chambers like a soft summer wind, rising and falling.
He walked forward until he found the room where she hid, and peered inside. The child sat in the dark corner in the back with a tattered cornhusk doll clutched to her chest. She rocked back and forth, petting the doll fiercely, singing to it.
Stone Ghost said, “Hello, child. Are you all right?”
The little girl turned to stone. The only things that moved were her eyes. Through a veil of dirty tangled hair, he saw them lift. They focused on Stone Ghost, as though he were the predator and she the mouse hiding in the brush.
Stone Ghost hobbled into the room and looked around. Thick cobwebs filled the corners and hung from the wasp nests that covered the ceiling like tan cones. Old mats and baskets scattered the floor. Is that where she’d found the tattered doll? In one of the baskets? It looked ancient. Its faded red dress had been mouse-chewed and stained with water that had dripped down through the cracks in the roof, but two jet eyes still stared from the face.
Stone Ghost shuffled through a pile of disintegrating floor mats and lowered himself in front of the little girl. She still didn’t move. She just watched him.
He grunted as he extended his legs and rubbed his aching knees. “You’re lucky you aren’t old enough to hurt this way. Age is a curse.”
Stone Ghost rested his walking stick on the floor at his side and sighed. “That’s a pretty doll. Where did you find it?”
The girl’s lips moved, as though she were nursing, but no sound emerged.
Stone Ghost smiled. “You know, I remember when people still lived here. Oh, it was many sun cycles ago, when I was just a boy, but this was a beautiful place.”
Two parallel lines of blue spirals had been painted on the white walls. They encircled the room like azure jewels. But the place smelled of ancient destruction.
In the softest voice, Stone Ghost continued, “You know those spirals were very important to the First People. They were symbols of the journey through the underworlds to get to this place of light and warmth. Some of the First People believed their ancestors had climbed through three underworlds, others believed there had been four. But whether they believed this was the Fourth World, or the Fifth, they were very happy to be here.”
The girl seemed to perk up. Her gaze shifted to the spirals, then darted back to Stone Ghost and landed on the spirals on his chin.
He asked, “Do you know what they mean?”
He thought the girl nodded, but it was such a subtle dip of her head, he couldn’t be sure.
Stone Ghost touched his chin. “What do you think they mean?”
The child shifted her doll to her left hand and lifted her dirty right hand to point at the spirals on the wall.
“That’s right,” Stone Ghost praised. “Very good. They are the same.”
She lowered her right hand to clutch her doll again, and Stone Ghost noticed the bruises on her forearm. He looked more closely and saw other bruises, older
ones, on her throat. Four of them, as though a careless stranger had grabbed her by the throat and left fingerprints on her flesh.
“What happened here?” Stone Ghost asked and pointed.
The girl dared to glance down, as if trying to see her throat, but quickly focused on Stone Ghost again.
“Did someone hurt you, child?”
She blinked a couple of times, then stammered, “G-Grandfather.”
Stone Ghost just nodded, fearing that if he showed any excitement that she had spoken, she might become mute again. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”
She gripped her doll in a stranglehold, her own fingers digging in the way her grandfather’s must have around her throat.
Stone Ghost exhaled. “Sometimes grown-ups don’t understand that things hurt. Your grandfather probably didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Tears filled the girl’s eyes, and she sucked her lip so hard it made a desperate squeal. He thought she tilted her head in disagreement.
“Do you think he meant to harm you?” Stone Ghost asked gently.
The girl blinked at her doll.
“How did you feel when he did that?”
They sat in silence for perhaps ten heartbeats, then the girl said, “Dizzy. Sick.”
She’d spoken so softly, Stone Ghost had barely heard her.
He asked, “Did you do something bad that made your grandfather hurt you? Something that he thought was bad?”
The girl’s eyes rolled upward, as though the answer were somewhere high above her, in a place she couldn’t reach.
Stone Ghost waited.
The child finally lowered her gaze and propped her
doll on her drawn-up knees. She bounced the doll back and forth and went back to singing the same lullaby he’d heard when he’d first arrived. After a few verses, she suddenly stopped, shook her doll hard, and through gritted teeth growled, “You don’t run away, B-Bone … Walker! You don’t ever run away! Do you hear me?”
She threw the doll to the floor and hit it with a tiny fist, then slowly turned to glare at Stone Ghost from beneath long dark lashes.
Bone Walker? What an odd name for a little girl. A chill went through him. Her eyes were no longer those of a child, but something old and evil. She might have been a ghost that had walked the earth alone and wailing for a thousand sun cycles.
Stone Ghost reached out to tenderly pat the doll’s dry cornhusk back. “What happened after he hurt you for running away, Bone Walker?”
The little girl jerked as though he’d startled her from a dream, and her mouth trembled.
Stone Ghost picked up the doll and handed it back to her. She held it tightly for a long time, then leaned toward Stone Ghost, and stared up at him with eyes like obsidian beads.
Her lips moved.
He had to lean very close before he could hear her whisper,
“He told me the owl was bad.”
Stone Ghost thought about that. “Did the owl make you run away?”
She stared past Stone Ghost at something far away, then curled on her side on the floor, yawned a wide long yawn, and closed her eyes.
“Bone Walker … Bone Walker?”
In less than twenty heartbeats, her chest rose and fell in the rhythms of deep sleep.
Stone Ghost exhaled hard and rubbed his knees.
 
 
BROWSER STEPPED INTO a chamber filled with burned roof timbers and carefully walked across the cluttered floor. Broken pots and old baskets lay in the corner to his left. The stench of bat dung and pack rat urine filled the air, and he could hear soft voices coming from the chambers ahead.
Before he entered the next chamber, he called, “Uncle?”
“Yes, Nephew. We are here. Come.”
Browser ducked through a T-shaped doorway into a dimly lit chamber. Stone Ghost and White Cone sat before a small fire they’d built in an old gray bowl. Stone Ghost straightened and the firelight rippled thorough the feathers of his cape. His sparse white hair had a translucent quality, as though made of spiderwebs. He held out a hand to the willow twig mat beside him. “Sit, Nephew.”
Browser knelt on the mat and looked at White Cone. The elder had a red-and-black striped blanket pulled over his head. It fell around him in such thick folds that only his wrinkled face, and the hand holding the blanket closed beneath his chin, showed.
“Uncle, we are almost out of food. What little we have left in our packs, along with the remains of the antelope, will feed us for another day. After that, we must find food.”
The little orphan girl lay curled on her side in the back corner of the room, her dirty thumb in her mouth.
Her huge black eyes fixed on Browser with an unsettling intensity.
“Are there people here that we can trade with?” White Cone asked.
“If there are, we will have to do it carefully. The White Moccasins will have ears in every wall,” Browser said.
Stone Ghost leaned forward. “Perhaps, when some of the smaller villages were abandoned, they cached corn, beans, and squash. We may wish to search their old chambers.”
“I will do that, Uncle, but from what I’ve seen, they may have abandoned the canyon because of starvation. I saw no stubble in the fields, did you? The ground looked fallow to me.”
“Yes,” Stone Ghost agreed. “It did, which means we may be forced to hunt pack rats for a meal.”
“I see food,” the little girl said, barely audible.
“What?” White Cone asked and cocked his head.
The girl just stared at him.
Stone Ghost studied her with sober eyes.
“It is almost dark,” White Cone said. “You will be sending out scouts, yes?”
“Yes.” Browser nodded. “I want small parties of two to work their way around the canyon. We don’t wish to draw attention to ourselves. All our scouts need to do is watch for our enemy, and determine which houses, if any, are likely prospects for food caches.”
“I shall order my people to prepare.” White Cone looked at Stone Ghost. “Curious, is it not? One hundred sun cycles ago, a Mogollon chief came here in a rage to raid Talon Town. Today we return in friendship, working hand-in-hand with Straight Path people to find the most famous witch of all time. Perhaps we are the inheritors of Poor Singer’s prophecy after all.”
“Perhaps, Elder,” Browser said, “but I—”
The little girl suddenly hunched down and her eyes grew huge. “Do you see him?” she whispered.
“Who?” Browser spun around. This chamber nestled in the inner heart of the town. It had no windows, but part of the roof had collapsed and starlight penetrated through a hole in front of Browser. He stared up at it, trying to see if anything moved.
“He’s lost,” the girl hissed and started trembling. “See his big eyes?” Utter terror twisted her face. She leaped up and ran to hide behind Stone Ghost.
The Mogollon elder peered at her over his shoulder. “Poor child. She must have witnessed terrible things to send her souls spiraling into madness.”
Stone Ghost shifted to look at the girl, and firelight sheathed his long-beaked nose. The wrinkles around his wide mouth deepened. “Yes,” he said softly.
Browser rose and walked to the doorway. “I must see to my duties. Thank you, Elders. I wish you a pleasant evening.”
He stepped into the next room and passed the Mogollon warriors. They sat around pots of stew. The last of their water and corn cakes had been mixed with bits of meat cut from the antelope’s bones.
Browser nodded to them and continued on through a series of empty, dusty chambers. In the last room, he found Jackrabbit and Catkin.
“Anything?” he said as he stepped into the chamber.
Jackrabbit squatted in the starlight watching the empty plaza below, and the line of rooms that made up Kettle Town’s southern wall. Catkin leaned against the west wall, her cloak pulled tightly about her shoulders. She had a half-eaten corn cake in her hand.
“No,” Jackrabbit said. “Not yet.”
Browser looked out the window. Beyond Kettle Town, he could see snow-filled roads and abandoned fields.
“The only thing that has moved is a hare,” Jackrabbit said. “And he looked lonely.”
“Where is Straighthorn?”
Catkin pointed to the roof. “He’s hidden under an
old blanket in case anyone looks down from the cliff. But he has a good view.”
Browser lowered himself beside Catkin and gestured at the doorway leading to the interior rooms. “This is a good place to hide out. So long as we stay in the interior rooms, the smoke from our cooking fires is dissipated by the ceilings. This morning, I showed the Mogollon the best escape routes through the passageways. Except for food, we’d be set to stay here indefinitely.”
Catkin finished her corn cake and dusted her hands off on her buffalo-leather leggings. “Except for food, and the fact that within a day or two they will know we’re here.”
The pale gray light turned her dark eyes into pools of silver. Browser said, “Then we must work quickly.”
“What about tonight? How are we going to do this?”
Browser turned to Jackrabbit. “Jackrabbit, I want you and Straighthorn to work your way toward Talon Town. Go slowly, stick to the shadows. Take a good look at Hillside village and the ruins of Talon Town. You know the place so you’ll be able to tell if anyone’s been there since the Katsinas’ People left ten moons ago.”
“Yes, War Chief.” Jackrabbit nodded. “Do you remember Peavine?”
Catkin had been attacked by Ash Girl just after finding Peavine’s body atop the stairway that led up the cliff.
“What about her?” Browser asked.
Jackrabbit didn’t take his eyes off the plaza. “She kept a cache of corn in one of the old abandoned rooms halfway between here and Talon Town. Not many people knew about it, just my friend and me. We left so soon after Peavine’s death, it might still be there.”
“Look, but be careful. You, of all people, know how dangerous this is, Jackrabbit.”
“I do, War Chief.”
Catkin said, “Do you wish me to scout—”
“No. I want you to come with me. We need to find a high place where we can see over most of the canyon. If Two Hearts is here, he will have lookouts posted. We must find them before they find us.”
Catkin’s hand tightened around her war club. “Yes, I understand.”
As the Cloud People gathered over the canyon, the starlight dimmed, leaving them in darkness. “It’s time.” Browser got to his feet. “Jackrabbit, take Straighthorn and go. May the katsinas be with you.”
“And with you, War Chief.”
Browser motioned to Catkin, and they walked out into the evening and climbed down the ladder into Kettle Town’s plaza.
“This way,” Browser said and took the lead.
Catkin followed him as he rounded Kettle Town’s east wall and trotted across the weed-filled flat toward the small house against the cliff. The roofs of the irregular rooms led to the cliff stairway. Browser started up slowly, feeling the weathered ceiling poles, wondering if they would still hold his weight. They creaked as he climbed, but he made it to the ancient steps cut into the sandstone, and hurried upward. Catkin followed in silence.
When he reached the rim, Wind Baby’s cold breath sucked his warmth away. Browser tucked his cloak tightly about his shoulders and looked around.
“How are you?” he whispered to Catkin. The last time she’d been up here, she’d been ambushed.
“Well enough. Let’s hurry. The White Moccasins could be on top of us before we have the first hint of their presence.”
Browser bent low and trotted along the worn sandstone to an overlook point. He crawled out onto the cold stone ledge and got down on his belly. Catkin eased out beside him.
For long moments, they watched the dark valley below.
As the Cloud People sailed to the south, their shadows roamed the starlit ground.
“Nothing,” Browser whispered. “No fires. From up here, the canyon looks dead.”
Wind Baby blew down from the northwest, and his icy breath penetrated every niche in Browser’s clothing. He cocked his head, sniffing. “Do you smell that?”
“What?”
“Smoke. It’s very faint.”
She lifted her turned-up nose and her nostrils flared. “I don’t smell anything, but it could be from our own fires in Kettle Town.”
Browser shook his head. “The wind is wrong.”
“But Wind Baby plays along the canyon rims, Browser. He whips back and forth. You never know where—”
“Trust me. The smoke is coming from the northwest.”
He led the way, crossing the waterworn rock and climbing the eroded terraces that led to the mesa top. As they hiked up the last outcrop and stepped onto the flats, Wind Baby shoved them mercilessly.
Browser bent into the gale and started forward with his war club in hand. Catkin trotted behind him.
“The only shelter up here is Center Place,” she called from behind.
“I know. We may just find a group of mourners with soul pots who’ve come to release their loved ones’ souls onto the Great North Road.”
Browser trotted along the old road that led straight to Center Place.
There, he smelled it again: smoke on the wind.
Gesturing to Catkin, he slowed. Ahead in the darkness he could see Center Place. The two-story town faced south. A single low wall curved across the front to enclose the plaza with its eleven internal kivas.
Browser stopped and crouched down.
“Someone is there,” Catkin said.
“Yes. Stay low.”
She nodded.
Browser bent over and started forward. How long did they have until moonrise? One hand of time? He tried to remember. He and Catkin had to be away before then or they’d stand out like towers on the windswept surface.
Step by step the looming bulk of Center Place grew to fill the sky. Legends said that once, long ago, it had been a gleaming white palace, visible for miles along the Great North Road, but the plaster had flaked and fallen to the ground. The detritus made for uneven footing as Browser trotted into the shadows cast by the wall.
Two paces behind, Catkin moved with ghostly silence.
Browser worked around to where a wing wall had collapsed and climbed onto the abutment. He reached up and grasped the roof pole. Catkin, from long practice, cupped a hand and boosted him onto the flat roof.
Silence.
Reaching down, he grasped Catkin’s hand and she scrambled up beside him. They lay on their bellies listening to the darkness. The smell of smoke drifted past with greater regularity, and with it, the unmistakable aromas of boiling corn and turkey.
They exchanged glances; then Browser crept forward on all fours and peered down into the plaza. To his right, three circular kivas jutted from the plaza floor of the L-shaped town. Straight in front of him, a red gleam lit one of the doorways partway down the northern room block. As he watched, shadows moved within.
Browser eased down from the parapet to the plaza floor. Catkin seemed to flow over the wall. Her war club was in hand, her head turning as she searched the plaza.
Browser kept to the shadows at the base of the walls.
He crossed the darkened kiva roofs, and slipped slowly down the northern wall. There, where one of the kivas abutted the northern room block, he crouched. Catkin wedged herself in beside him.
“ … they are here?” a voice inside asked.
“Somewhere,” Blue Corn responded gruffly. “My sources couldn’t be mistaken about that.”
Catkin’s eyes widened, and Browser made a calming motion with his hand.
“We’ll find them,” Rain Crow answered. “There is no way the Mogollon could have beaten our scouts here. Not with two old men to slow them down. No, Matron, we have them. No matter what, the canyon is a trap for them. Their plight reminds me of a pine nut on a rock. We are the pestle that shall crack them.”
“This alliance bothers me,” Blue Corn said uncertainly. “That old witch, Stone Ghost, is no one’s fool. Why would he put in with the Fire Dogs? And War Chief Browser, despite the reputation he has developed for ineptness, has no love for the Fire Dogs either.”

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