Wild Inferno (23 page)

The upper Pueblo Trail of dirt, stone, and gravel escalated two hundred feet as it followed the narrow causeway to the Guard House site and upward from there, ascending a steplike rock outcropping to the Great House Pueblo at the top. As I started up the path, I heard a distant roar like the one that had first warned me on the morning I had gone looking for Grampa Ned. I turned and looked behind me. From this higher ground, a panoramic view of the western aspect of the mountain stretched below me. In the darkness, it looked like the black back of the slope had split open and erupted into five twisted rivers of yellow flame and a hundred tiny crimson craters—and the radiant halo around all these was a fiery incandescence that reddened even the smoke with a lurid atomic light. One seam flared. Trees began to candle. The pyre of dried brush and flashy juniper formed a fireball and shot celebratory sparks into the rubescent mantling that the inferno wore as it marched upward toward the rim of the Chimney Rock cuesta, now only a few hundred yards away. A torrent of hot wind blasted my face, caught the edge of my helmet, and threatened to lift it off, and the rope of hair escaped from beneath it and flew behind me like a sail.

I turned and ran up the narrow path in the dark. To either side of the slim stretch of trail, the edge dropped away sharply, but I feared the fire more. “Mountain?” I called. “Momma Anna? Anna Santana!” But the wind howled past me and shredded my words.

After the Guard House site, the way widened slightly, but became rocky and entailed climbing up a stone stretch that made a natural stairway. I bounded up this and found myself out of breath at the high corner of the rock wall of the Great House Pueblo. The wall sheltered me from the wind, so I stopped to catch my breath. I started to call out again for Mountain and Momma Anna, but something caused me to resist. Instead, I made my way along the wall and up the inclined path to the next corner, pausing to listen for a moment. Then I headed up the remaining few yards to the top of the wall and the rim of the upper of the two kivas that were part of the Great House Pueblo. From this high point, I could see the entire sloping mesa of Chimney Rock below me. Trees had begun torching all along the western rim of the cuesta. A patch of brush near the stone outcropping I'd just climbed ignited, and I realized that the recessed stone circle of the kiva was probably my best safety zone. I switched on my headlamp and looked down into the darkness, and there I saw Momma Anna sitting next to Delgado Gonzales against the curving wall. They looked up at me in surprise as the glare of my headlamp washed over their faces.

I bounded down the steps. “Momma Anna, what are you doing here? Where is Mountain?”

She waved a hand, indicating I should come to her, but she did not speak.

“Where is Mountain?” I said again, louder.

She held a finger to her lips. Delgado pushed his hands against the wall and managed to stand upright on his one good leg. “Better come sit down, Jamaica,” he said. “That fire is going to burn over us, and we'll be safer if we huddle down against this rock wall.”

“But—”

Momma Anna interrupted me. “Sit down!”

Delgado added, “There's no vegetation in here, and very little right around the Great House, so I think we'll be fine. You can take your pack off so you can sit more comfortably, but keep it nearby, just in case.”

I took off my helmet, unhooked my pack and let it drop. I came and sat against the wall, next to Momma Anna.

“This boy Talking Spider from Tanoah Pueblo,” she said.

“I know.”

Momma Anna held her finger to her lips again. “We must talk quiet. You”—she pointed the same finger at me now—“listen.”

The hotshot lowered himself to the ground, then scooted away from the wall to sit in front of the two of us, his injured leg extending straight out to one side. He leaned in so we could hear one another better.

“My brother was a wisdom keeper, a storyteller,” Gonzales began. “Two are chosen from each generation—a male and a female—to carry certain parts of our culture. Some learn songs, some learn stories, and some learn wisdom.”

“Knifewing have big honor,” Momma Anna said.

Gonzales nodded. “Knifewing is my brother's medicine name.”

Momma Anna continued: “He and next other young girl carry Star Woman wisdom,” she said, and she placed a fist against her chest, indicating where they held this knowledge. “Star Woman first one. Come through hole in sky. Pull first man through for seed. She is here.”

“She's here?” I said.

Again, Momma Anna placed her finger to her lips, indicating that I should keep my voice down. I looked around but couldn't understand the need for quiet. We were sheltered from the fierce winds preceding the fire, and even more, the atmosphere seemed to have suddenly become eerily silent.

“First woman, one true Grandmother, all clan. She is here.”

The hotshot saw my confusion and intervened. “Every one of us at Tanoah Pueblo can trace our ancestry back to one woman. Our legends say she is buried here, at Chimney Rock. My brother Louie—Knifewing—was given the knowledge of the location of her grave site. We are lucky that archaeologists have never discovered it and disturbed it. It is sacred to us, and the wisdom is held closely by our tribe, shared with only two people from each generation. My brother was the lookout for our crew and when he was watching the fire through his field glasses, he saw someone digging at the grave of the Star Woman, our one true Grandmother. He left to go confront the man. That was before the fire blew up.”

“You must clean drum,” Momma Anna said, looking intently at me. She held her hand to her heart. “You have story, one day summon ancestors. Drum must be clear, make song.”

I tried to muster patience with the old woman, but I could not. “What does that have to do with anything?” I shouted, and I stood up. “I'm sorry, but why did you come up here when you should have evacuated?” I looked at Gonzales for some support. I pointed at him. “You could have been burned again! You both could have. And where the hell is Mountain?”

Neither of them spoke, but they both looked beyond me at the rim of the kiva.

“I can answer that,” a voice said from the darkness.

Saturday, 0515 Hours

“First, Jamaica, throw your radio and phone out in the center there,” Elaine Oldham said. The sky was beginning to lighten slightly and she stood on the rim of the kiva in silhouette against a steel gray backdrop, her head tipped to one side, looking through the sight of a rifle she had jammed into one shoulder.

I stood up.

“Do it,” she said in an icy voice.

“Where's Mountain?” I reached to my side to unsnap the strap.

“He's in the fire tower. Throw it. Into the center. Then put your hands on top of your head.”

I did as she said. “Mountain's in the fire tower?”

“Lucky thing we had steaks for dinner tonight or I'd never have gotten him up there.”

“But the fire!”

“He's safe enough. The base of that thing is solid rock.”

“It's wood above the base. It's only about twenty feet to the wood. The fire can easily ladder up those shrubs beside it to the deck. Let me go get him. I'll bring him back here, I promise.”

“Let her go get the wolf,” Delgado said, pulling himself up against the wall.

“Sit right back down, Gonzales!” Oldham yelled. “Don't any of you move, or I swear to God I'll shoot you all.”

The hotshot lowered himself back to the ground.

“That's better.”

“Elaine, you don't want to harm my wolf, you told me you loved him. You wanted to spend more time with him, remember? Let me go get him.”

“It's too late. Besides, he's your baby, remember? Why should you get to save your baby when I can't save mine?”

I looked at her bewildered. “What does Mountain have to do with…”

“Be quiet! Just be quiet! I'll do the talking.”

“Yes, let's talk, Elaine. Let's all calm down and we can talk about it.” I started to move my hands from my head.

“Put them back—now! And don't you patronize me. I'm going to shoot the next time anyone moves.”

I hesitated.

“You don't think I will? Believe me, I'll shoot you. And I'm a good shot, too. Out there in that godforsaken, stinking desert at Hovenweep I had to be able to hit a rattlesnake at a safe distance. I used to pass the time in the evenings shooting at tin cans. I'm not half bad, so don't test me.”

Delgado whispered to me, “She's got a .270 rifle there. Do what she says.” Then he called to Elaine, “At least let this old grandmother go, please.”

Elaine thought a moment, shook her head. “Sorry, I can't. I'm going to have to kill all three of you. I can't risk having a witness again this time.”

Suddenly, it was all clear. “You killed Grampa Ned, and Louie Gonzales was a witness.”

“You seem surprised. I thought by now you would have figured it out,” she said, her voice full of venom. “In fact, I thought you knew. You were the last one to talk to the hotshot. You kept asking me about the sites, about when I excavated them, about whether there was anything a pothunter would have wanted there. I knew you were trying to get me to incriminate myself. But I was right behind you the whole time.”

“You slashed my tent. Went through my things.”

“I had to. I tried to scare you off, but when I couldn't, I had to find out what you knew. I have a child to support, I can't go to jail. They'd just put her in some state-run institution and let her die. There's no one else to take care of her, especially now.”

I was starting to figure it all out. “Grampa Ned was the father.”

“He tried to deny it. Right from the beginning.”

“He was an advisor on the site when you excavated it?”

“Don't judge me. Don't you dare judge me.”

“No, I wasn't. I don't. I've heard he was very handsome…”

“You should have seen him back then.” Her voice softened. “He was such a good-looking man, so charming. We spent all day, day after day, together one whole summer while I worked on that site. I fell in love with him. But when I told him about the baby, he denied it was his. He refused to see me, wouldn't answer my phone calls. I had to go away, someplace where it wouldn't be much noticed that I was pregnant, someplace remote where no one cared. There was a lot of stigma back then about single mothers, a lot of shame involved, not like today. I sacrificed my career going off to Hovenweep, to the middle of nowhere. I wrote to him, but he never answered my letters. And then, when my baby was born with Down syndrome, I had to put her in a facility. I never asked that bastard Ned Spotted Cloud for help until they told me the hospital was closing and I had to find her a new place for care. It's going to cost so much more. There's no way I can afford it.” Her voice was rising in pitch as she spoke. “I needed his help. He wouldn't even have had to give me any of his own money. All I asked was for him to admit his paternity and she would have been eligible for an allowance from the tribal growth fund. But he refused. He refused and he called me a whore. He laughed at me and walked away.”

“Elaine, hold on a minute,” I said, “there are other ways to prove paternity. We can still—”

“I know that,” she snapped, “but can you imagine what that would do to my career now, this late in life, when I'm practically disposable anyway? To have a paternity suit going, all that scandal? Maybe I could have done it, but it was just another expense, another cross to bear, all because of Ned Spotted Cloud. I didn't plan it. That morning when they called your team in to manage the fire, my boss asked me to go flag the sites on the eastern flank since I was familiar with them. I hiked up to that site and there was Ned. I stayed behind some trees and watched as he dug a hole and then placed something in it. I realize now there must have been a burial back in that little granary, under the floor—something I missed when we dug the site years ago. I was young back then and inexperienced. And I was distracted.

“Anyway, as I watched him, I just got more and more furious. He had obviously taken something from that site! Something from my site, and not even told me about it! Now we know what it was, it was that bear effigy.”

At this, both Delgado and Momma Anna audibly gasped.

But Oldham seemed not to have noticed. “Do you know what that could have done for my career, to find something like that? It could have made all the difference! Anyway, I didn't know what it was then, when I saw Ned there digging. I was just worried about my daughter. I didn't know what I was going to do for the extra money. And he had treated me so rudely just a few months ago when I'd asked about the fund—I was still angry about that, so angry it kept me awake nights. For months, I had been lying there half the night envisioning him dying of some terrible disease and feeling the sweet taste of revenge. And here he was in front of me! So I waited behind the trees, and when he came down the path, I tripped him. He dropped his shovel when he fell, and I didn't even think about it, I just picked it up as he went down and hit him over the head with it.”

“And Louie?” I asked. “The hotshot?”

“I had gone back up to the site and was looking for what Ned had buried when I heard that hotshot coming, so I just ran into the brush and hid again and watched. He looked all around, and he called out, ‘Hello? Anyone here?' and then he went right to the spot where Ned had been digging! I couldn't believe it. He must have seen what I'd done. Otherwise how would he know to go right to that spot? So, while he was down on his hands and knees pushing the earth back into the hole, I came up behind him and hit him with the shovel, too. He had a helmet on, so I didn't know if I'd killed him, but I thought I felt the shovel blade connect with his head.”

“Oh, my God!” Delgado cried out.

“It all happened so fast!” Elaine said. “I was horrified at what I had done, but I had to think what to do with the bodies. I could see from up there that the fire was coming that way, so I figured that would take care of everything—and that I'd better get out of there before it took care of me, too. I'd hiked in from right below the heel of the fire, so I just made my way back down. Then, when I got to Fire Camp later that day, you guys were in the middle of the transition and hadn't yet taken over, and I realized that nobody knew I'd been on the fire that morning. So I decided to act like I'd just arrived.

“But then, Jamaica, I heard that the hotshot made it out and spoke to you. And you started asking me all those questions. Then you went back to the scene again, and I heard the FBI had asked for your help so I knew that they suspected someone on the fire. I thought you already knew it was me and were just looking for enough evidence to have me arrested.” She took a step back from the rim, the barrel of the rifle still pointed at me. “But you're not as smart as I thought you were. Too bad.” As she had been speaking, I noticed the sky behind her had changed from charcoal to dark blue. Waves of black smoke passed over her head like fast-moving clouds. I could smell the fire, hear limbs crackling and popping somewhere near the wall of the Great House.

“Let me get Mountain,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Just let me go get Mountain. You can go with me. This elder and this injured man can't get anyplace fast—besides, the fire has them blocked in.”

“No. You can't get him anyway, Jamaica. I locked him in the observation room on the top, and I made double sure he'd stay there—I locked the gate at the bottom, too.”

“Give me the keys, Elaine. Let me go get Mountain.”

“I threw the keys over the edge.” She stepped back and all I could see over the rim of the kiva was her head and shoulders and the stock of the rifle pointing out from her shoulder. Wind began to blow above us, and Elaine's long white ponytail flew up and loose strands of hair blew into her face. She took her left hand away from the barrel of the rifle to brush the hair from her eyes.

I quickly turned my head and looked at Gonzales. He nodded. I sprang for the steps as I heard a rustling sound from the kiva wall behind me. Elaine Oldham struggled for an instant and then fired. The sound of the gunshot mixed with the wind and stretched into two distinct tones: first, a high, loud
ping
—and then a piercing crack which assaulted my ears just as I felt a knife blade slice open the side of my right calf. Something struck Elaine in the gut and she staggered backward, dropped the rifle, turned, and ran. I stumbled on the steps and reached a hand down to feel if my leg had been cut in two. It was then I realized I'd been shot.

I scrambled up the last two steps. Heat seared through the muscle of my calf like a stabbing hot poker. I stumbled and fell, saw the large rock Gonzales had thrown at Elaine. I grabbed the rifle and stood up. Gonzales had hobbled to the bottom of the steps. I threw him the gun. “You watch out for Momma Anna,” I said.

I looked around for Elaine Oldham. A patch of dry brush had ignited at the base of the fire tower and flames were licking at the underside of the observation deck. I saw a shadow on the other side of the tower scrambling over the stone wall. I ran, limping, pain shooting up my side with every step on my right leg. I felt blood running down my leg into my boot, my sock getting wetter, and I knew I was bleeding a lot, that I needed to put pressure on the wound. I made it across the short stretch of trail to the wall in amazing time, given my injury. Hot gases from the burning brush just twenty yards from me burned my face. I peered over the wall to see Elaine Oldham hesitating at the edge of a large slab of rock at the rim of what was once the huge fire pit used for sending revelations and power to Chaco Canyon. Beyond her was nothing more than a long knife edge of shale that led up to the two spires, impossible to cross. Seeing that she could go no farther, Elaine Oldham stood on the edge of the stone and looked beyond. Just then, the barely visible new moon, a slender silver crescent no wider than a sliver, rose between Chimney Rock and Companion Rock and hung in the sky, its faint glow illuminating the murderer of Ned Spotted Cloud in the promised magic of Lunar Standstill.

The wind died down, and an instant later, the birth of a new dawn began to burnish the tips of the mountains along the Continental Divide yellow-gold. While Elaine studied the thin blade of shale rim ahead of her, desperately looking for a way to get across it, I dragged my right leg over the wall, dropped silently down to the soft dirt, and then lunged across the rock slab and ambushed the woman with a powerful punch in the kidney. She gushed air, dropped, and writhed. Putting as much of my weight as I could on my left leg, I grabbed one of Elaine Oldham's hands and twisted it up behind her while she gasped from the pain of my attack.

“Get up,” I told her, wrenching the arm up.

“I can't walk!” she said, sobbing. “My legs won't move.”

“You'll walk,” I said, yanking her arm again roughly, “or you'll fly. Right over the edge there. I'm through fooling around with you. I've got to get Mountain.”

She struggled to her knees, then put one foot down and I tugged her upper arm to help her to her feet.

“Over the wall!” I yelled, pushing her. While she struggled her way over, I tore my bandana from my neck and twirled it into a long, slim rope of cloth. I forced my right leg up and onto the top of the wall and felt the fiber of my calf muscle rip and another flood of blood stream onto the leg. I pushed myself over, falling partly onto Elaine Oldham, who was on her knees on the other side of the wall, still gasping with pain and clutching at her kidney with one hand. I pushed myself up, grabbed one of her hands and then the other, and I tied them behind her with the bandana. It was then that I heard Mountain twenty feet above me in the glass-enclosed observation room of the fire tower. He was hurling his body up and into the glass, yelping in fear and anxiety. The western edge of the observation deck was ablaze. The fire tower was burning.