Read Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries Online

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

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BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries

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The larger, Dusk House, to the west of the road, had been built by the First People back in the days when their empire stretched across most of the world. They had retreated to this location after the abandonment of Straight Path Canyon. It was here that the Made People
exacted their vengeance for the lifetimes of domination they had endured at the hands of the First People.

Those of the First People who had not been killed outright had fled for their lives, dashing away into the hills to find their way to the few remaining towns that would take them in. In groups of twos and threes, they had been hunted down until the Made People had concluded that they had killed them all.

But they hadn’t.

Browser raised a hand, bringing his party to a stop. He stood for a moment, panting from the long run from Dry Creek village. Search as he might, he could see no sign of danger in either of the two plastered towns before him.

“Looks peaceful,” Catkin said from behind him. “If Blue Corn means treachery, she has been very clever. If the Fire Dogs are really here, so have they. Nothing’s burning, no refugees came charging down the road in the middle of the night. I don’t hear any screams or see any dead people lying around.”

“I did not lie,” Cricket Dancer said, a stiffness in his voice. “My Matron gave you her promise of safe passage.” As he spoke, a young woman appeared on the roof of Sunrise House and began shaking the dust out of a blanket. A group of children burst from the corner of the building, laughing and chasing each other.

That more than anything reassured Browser. He looked back over his shoulder to see Cloudblower leading the long procession of Katsinas’ People and the Longtail refugees that had joined them. Even some of Rock Dove’s Dry Creek villagers had volunteered to make the trek to Flowing Waters Town to hear what the Fire Dogs had to say about Poor Singer’s prophecy. The line of people looked like dots of color as they hurried along the earthen ramp leading down from North House. Their bright clothing contrasted to the somber gray of the surrounding hills.

“I hope this isn’t a mistake. I’m not sure I trust Blue
Corn. She’s shifted allegiances too often to suit me.” Catkin gave him a sidelong glance. “But you know her better than I do.”

Browser nodded. “I’m not sure what she really believes. Her mother and aunt were devout believers in Poor Singer’s prophecy. They thought it would bring changes for the better. In the beginning Blue Corn was skeptical. Whatever faith she had in the katsinas evaporated when Flame Carrier refurbished the great kiva at Dusk House. When the doorway to the underworlds didn’t open, Blue Corn turned back to the old gods.”

“Just so she doesn’t turn on us, Browser.” Catkin shifted as she studied the two great houses. The round curve of her hip was close to his. Despite the chill in the mid-fall air he could feel her body heat. Strands of her black hair gleamed bluish in the bright morning sun. She, like he, had cut her hair short in mourning for their recently murdered Matron. He need not look back to know that none of the Katsinas’ People except Obsidian had long hair anymore. Why she hadn’t cut her hair, he couldn’t guess.

“What are you thinking?” Catkin asked, glancing at his serious expression.

“About Obsidian.”

He could sense the sharpening of Catkin’s interest.

“She still wears her hair long,” Browser explained.

“And full of jewelry. We could buy a winter’s food for what she has hung on her body. She should be grieving like the rest of us.”

“I suppose it’s because …” He didn’t finish the thought.

“Because it wasn’t her Matron who died? You are more charitable than I am, Browser.” She lifted one of her long legs and braced a sandaled foot on one knee to stand storklike. “Every day I’m more inclined to crack her skull with my war club.”

She studied the two great houses and the World Kivas that sprinkled the earthworks around the houses,
then added, “Are we going in there to see what kind of trap Blue Corn and these Fire Dogs have laid for us? Or are we just going to let the Katsinas’ People walk into an ambush?”

Browser’s thick black brows lifted. He turned to look at her. “I do not think other War Chiefs have to put up with such insolence.”

Behind them, Jackrabbit chuckled nervously to relieve the tension. He was a young man of sixteen summers. Like so many of the warriors, he had seen more life than his summers would have indicated. Beside him, seventeen-summers-old Straighthorn showed no hint of emotion. His heart was still numb over the loss of his young love, Redcrop, another casualty of the fighting around Longtail village. So many dead, so much misery and grief. How, in the name of the gods, did they stand it?

Browser carefully slipped his bow from his shoulder, and with a practiced move, strummed the taut string. War Chiefs in this day and age didn’t travel with unstrung bows. At least not the living ones.

He trotted out ahead of his party. If there was going to be trouble, it would be best to learn of it before he had to fight a retreating action.

Matron Blue Corn climbed up the ladder that led to her roof. The rickety thing groaned under her weight. The two upright poles were made of cottonwood—a brittle and unpredictable wood. Pine would have made a good solid ladder, but pine wasn’t so easy to come by these days, not when it might mean the lives of some of her people were she to send them off to the distant hills to get it.

The thirty-two sun cycles she had survived had used her poorly. Never a particularly attractive woman, years of worry and tragedy had taken a brutal toll. The mantle of Matron had been passed from mother, to aunt, to Blue Corn. After wavering, she had sided with
the Flute Player and the old gods. Faced with the realities of an extended drought, and charges of witchcraft flying about like hardened rawhide shields, she was no longer sure what she believed. With one exception: She desperately hoped each day that sunset would find her people still alive and healthy.

And, now, Gray Thunder and his Fire Dogs had trotted up to her gated wall asking for sanctuary and to speak to the freshly murdered Matron of the Katsinas’ People.

I must have been mad to let them in here.

She stepped out onto the pounded clay roof and looked northward. A small party of warriors jogged toward her. She knew that burly figure in front, his bow at the ready. War Chief Browser wore a yellow shirt these days. The only one he had, she assumed. At his shoulder, reliable as Father Sun’s rays after a summer rain, came Deputy Catkin, her long lean body wrapped in a red tunic. She ran with a bow over her shoulder, and a war club in her right hand.

In the rear came Cricket Dancer, her most trusted runner. Though he had been traveling for nearly a day straight, he didn’t stumble or weave.

Blue Corn winced when her knee sent a stabbing pain up her leg. As a young girl, she had jammed that knee jumping to the ground from a burning building over in the canyon country west of the Green Mesas. These days you were more likely to be killed by Straight Path people, but on that long ago day it had been a raid carried out by the Tower Builders. Odd, you didn’t hear so much about them anymore. The story carried south by traders was that many of their villages had turned to the katsinas, and they had their own troubles with the Flute Player Believers.

She glanced up at the blue sky. Father Sun rode high, his golden rays gleaming on the distant cloud people. When Browser came within hailing distance, she called, “Greetings, War Chief.”

“Are you all right?” Browser asked, slowing to a stop just out of bow shot.

“We are fine,” she returned. “Why, in the name of the Blessed Flute Player, wouldn’t we be?”

If her appeal to the old god affected him, he gave no sign, answering, “We were concerned about the intentions of the Fire Dogs. Cricket Dancer told us that you had allowed them within your walls.”

Did he think she was senile? She’d had them watched from the moment she gave them the narrow room block on the town’s southern wall. “The Fire Dogs have been as good as their word. They have shared what little food they brought with them. A new kind of bread, a thinly patted corn cake they call ‘piki.’ And odd word, but it tastes good. Our gates are open; you may enter in safety.”

She looked past him to the line of people who threaded their way down the causeway from North House. “Tell the rest they are welcome. Matron White Smoke cleaned up several rooms for you in Dusk House.” She pointed to the huge square town three bow shots to the west. The towering image of the Flute Player adorned the east wall, and beside him, smaller and darker, stood the Blue God. She was a bloody-headed woman with enormous empty eyes.

“I will do so, Matron.” Browser propped his hands on his hips and turned. He called, “Jackrabbit, Straighthorn, go and inform Matron White Smoke that our people are here; then inspect every room assigned to us. Many of those rooms have been walled up for sun cycles. I don’t want any surprises. Catkin and I will go and pay our regards to Matron Blue Corn.”

Browser’s warriors split off, trotting warily toward the old ruin of the First People’s last dream. White Smoke’s Buffalo Clan occupied less than twenty of the hundred or so still-accessible rooms.

Blue Corn turned and started back for her ladder. Whatever the Fire Dogs were cooking up, it was time
to stir the stew. She hoped that Cloudblower was no fool when it came to negotiations with canny characters like Gray Thunder.

CHAPTER 7

South of Bernalillo, New Mexico

TRAFFIC HAD BEEN desultory on the drive down I-25 from Santa Fe. The casino signs occupied Maureen’s attention as she watched the countryside flash past the Bronco’s window. To the east, the Sandia Mountains stood in silhouetted humps that shadowed the valley from the morning sun. The lingering taste of
huevos rancheros
titillated her taste buds. Something about the combination of eggs over-easy, hot corn tortillas fresh from the oven,
refritos,
cheddar, and chopped green chilis, with a rich seasoning of cumin, created ecstasy. She smiled; it was even better than the chocolate doughnuts and the rich black coffee in her favorite Tim Horton’s off the QEW outside of Hamilton.

As they drove into the slanting morning sunlight, Dusty pulled his battered brown cowboy hat low and drove with one hand. He wore a thick denim coat and mirrored sunglasses.

“Why would Dale leave his truck sitting out there overnight and not tell anyone?” Dusty whispered, more to himself than to her. “It’s just not like him.”

She studied him as they passed the clutter of truck stops, industrial warehouses, and motels that introduced the southbound traveler to Albuquerque. “I
thought you were the one who said not to worry about it.”

Dusty let off the gas as he entered the speed zone, and the Bronco growled under compression. “I don’t know. I mean, first the murder victims at the 10K3 site, then burned children in the kiva at Pueblo Animas. Too many peculiar things are happening.” He shook his head.

“You’re not thinking of
el basilisco,
are you?”

He glanced at her, then returned his attention to the road. “No.”

Uh-huh, she thought, remembering the beautiful little coiled jet snake with the red coral eye that they’d dug up from a murdered woman’s grave at the 10K3 site in Chaco Canyon. Dusty seemed to be plagued by Ariasazi witchcraft.

“You think I’m crazy, Doctor?”

“I suspected that the moment I met you on that Proto-Iroquois site in New York, Stewart. All I can say is that after months of close exposure to your warm fuzzy personality, I’m convinced.”

His mouth twisted. “Did I ever tell you what a charming person you are to be around? Always seeing the bright side, cheering a fellow up.”

“That’s my mission …
watch out!”
She threw a hand against the dash as Dusty jammed on the brakes to avoid rear-ending a little blue Toyota that swerved into their lane.

“Asshole!” Dusty yelled.

“Ouch!” She looked down at the big black revolver that slid out from under the seat and clunked into the back of her heel. “Stewart, I wish to God you’d get a seat belt for the passenger’s seat!”

“Me? Why don’t you wish some of these ostrich-headed idiots would drive like human beings? If it wasn’t for lunatics like that, people wouldn’t need seat belts!”

She grimaced down at the revolver. “There’s a gun between my feet.”

“Sounds Freudian.”

Annoyed, she replied, “Of course, it does. You’re a man.”

“Maureen, it’s just a pistol. Reach down and slide it back under the seat.”

“Is it loaded?”

“You bet.”

She stared at the gun. It seemed to ooze evil. “You know, you’d be in jail in Canada, and most of the civilized world.”

“Yeah, yeah, Canada and Communist China have banned all the guns. Well, this is the United States of America. We’re still mostly free to protect ourselves from bad guys. Just push the revolver back under the seat. It won’t bite.”

The sensation was like riding with a coiled rattlesnake between her boots. She used her heel to kick it back, glaring at him the whole time.

He wheeled them through the traffic to the exit onto 1-40 eastbound. The Bronco thump-thumped over the cement overpass and merged into the line of shining autos that crept along at the post-rush-hour crawl.

Dusty took the exit onto Louisiana and hedged his way into the left lane. Maureen raised an eyebrow when they passed the Winrock Mall and its trendy stores. At the light on Independence, he waited for the arrow, passed the Marriott, and wound around to a small industrial building hidden behind the hotel and the glass and brick restaurants.

The white building sported a sign stating: ROBERTSON & STEWART, CULTURAL RESOURCES CONSULTANTS.

“So, this is it?” Maureen opened the door and stepped out onto the small asphalt parking lot. It held four spaces that apparently didn’t get a lot of use. The paint defining the spaces still looked fresh.

“Home away from home,” Dusty told her as he walked around, opened the passenger door, and jammed some empty bottles between the seat bottom and the floorboard to keep the revolver in place.

Maureen shook her head.

Dusty unlocked the office’s aluminum-framed glass door, then reached down to retrieve a weathered metate, an ancient grinding stone. He used the artifact to prop open the door.

“We rent this by the year. It serves for an office, lab, and place to keep the paperwork. Sometimes when we have extra field crew in town, we crash them in the back room.”

He led her into a spartan but functional front office. The light wood veneer walls gleamed under the fluorescent lights. The metal desk sported a telephone, typewriter, and pencil cup. On a stand to the right stood a copy machine with a case of paper visible behind the open cabinet door. The calendar on the wall had been turned to September; never mind that this was the first day of November. The opposite wall had been covered with contiguous 1-to-500,000-scale maps of Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, and Colorado. Pins were stuck here and there in the maps, some with tags that denoted sites and others marking project areas. The big wooden case blocking the plate-glass window held stacks of USGS quadrangles.

Dusty pushed the button on the combination phone/ answering machine/fax that promptly told him he had four messages. The first ran.

A man with an English accent said,
“Dale, you son of a bitch! I didn’t think that even you could sink this low! I will not allow you to pour salt into old wounds. Keep this up, and you’ll think my last rebuttal to your article was a joke. I’ll be your worst nightmare
.”

Dusty frowned as the next message played.
“Dale? It’s Maggie. We found your truck this morning. If you get this, please call and let us know you’re all right.”
Two more Maggie messages followed, each slightly more concerned than the last.

Dusty picked up the phone and punched the speed dial. He listened for a moment, meeting Maureen’s concerned stare. Finally he said, “Dale? Dusty. Hey, we’re getting a little worried about you. If you get to your place before I do, I don’t want to play tag with you all day long. Just stay put. We’ll be there as soon as we get the Pueblo Animas artifacts unloaded. And call Maggie to let her know you’re okay.”

He hung up and stared at the phone for several moments.

“Who was the Englishman?” Maureen asked. He didn’t sound very friendly.

“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize his voice. Maybe that’s what this is all about. Dale’s engaged, once again, in an academic squabble.”

Maureen folded her arms. “What rebuttal was he talking about?”

Dusty shrugged. “I don’t know. Dale’s last published article, however, was about the evidence for cannibalism in the Southwest. The Englishman was probably upset that his alabaster Anasazi turned out to be human beings.”

He walked over, opened the wooden door in the back wall, and flipped a light switch. Maureen followed him into a spacious lab. Cinder-block walls were lined with wooden shelving made of two-by-fours and plywood. From floor to ceiling they were packed with cardboard boxes full of brown paper artifact bags, soil sample bags, portions of broken pottery, collections of animal bone, and thick slabs of ground stone. A stack of shovels cluttered the corner behind the door. Wooden screens stood in the back of the room, all propped up like an angular line of soldiers.

Maureen ran a finger along one of the dusty lab tables. It, like the three others that ran lengthwise down the center of the room, had been constructed of two-by-fours
and covered with plywood. Each table was littered with microscopes, calipers, light tables, maps, and stacks of reference books on southwestern ceramics, geology, archaeology, botany, and a host of other subjects. Shoe boxes held stacks of three-by-five index cards in clear sandwich bags that identified individual artifacts for curation.

Through the open door to her left, she could see a small bathroom with sink, toilet, and shower. To her right, more shelves lined the wall, bursting with reference books, field reports, and the other exotica of report production.

“Dale?” Dusty called. “You here?”

Maureen leaned over to examine the mouse dung on the file cabinets and boxes. “Nobody here but us mice.”

“Yeah, I need to bait the traps again.”

Dusty stepped to the closest table and rolled up the maps there. Scrounging a rubber band, he secured them and used a whisk broom to bat a cloud of dust from the tabletop. “That should be enough room for the Pueblo Animas stuff, right there.” He pointed.

Maureen spent the next half hour packing in boxes of human bone, pottery sherds, soil samples, and other cultural material from their dig at Pueblo Animas. This, as in her specialty in physical anthropology, was where the real work started. Contrary to popular opinion and the image created by
National Geographic,
most archaeology was done in the lab, perched on uncomfortable chairs, peering down at bits of human trash that opened dim windows into long-vanished worlds.

As he set down the last of the boxes, Dusty said, “Okay, there it is. That’s the last of the field records.” He thumped the cardboard box full of forms. “Sylvia took the photos into the processor, so that’s taken care of.”

“Right. Let’s go see if Dale’s home,” Maureen said, and headed for the front door. “He and I are going to
have a little talk about this employee complex he’s developed.”

“You’re going to beard Dale in his own house?”

“Yep.”

“This I gotta see.”

Casa Rinconada, Chaco Canyon

Magpie propped her hands on her hips. She stood just above the gaping circumference of the Casa Rinconada great kiva. A cold wind tugged at her green Park Service jacket, and teased the ends of her shoulder-length hair where it escaped her silver clasp. Looking to the east, she could see her vehicle parked beside Dale’s gleaming red truck. It was supposed to be her lunch hour. She checked her watch. In fifteen minutes she had to be back at the Visitors Center, on guard at the main desk to accommodate the few tourists who passed through this late in the season.

Maggie couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible had happened to Dale.

She sighed and looked around. Maybe it was just the stress she’d been under lately. Her elderly aunt Sage was dying of cancer. She lived alone just off the road north of Grants. Despite Magpie taking every chance to drive down to see her, the old woman refused to leave her old trailer house. She wanted to die in her house, not among strangers at a hospice in Albuquerque or at the hospital in Gallup.

Her eyes fixed on his red truck, as though it could send her a message, some subtle clue as to where Dale might be.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Rupert Brown, the park superintendent, had told her when she’d reported the vehicle. “This is Dale we’re talking about. I’ve known him since before you were born. He does things like this. I think I’ll write him a citation personally, just to
see the expression on his face when he roars in here to protest.”

But Maggie’s encounter with the vanishing owl, the faint hazy vision of Dale walking right up this path toward Casa Rinconada, had been eating at her all day. She’d had to return for a second look.

Turning, she looked off to the west, up the low gray ridge that humped out from the side of Rincon Canyon’s buff-colored sandstone. The grasses and brush, stroked by the wings of the wind, might have been beckoning her. Why? She knew that ridgetop. Nothing was up there except an unexcavated ruin.

The flash of white caught her eye. Maggie frowned, shading her vision as she studied it. It looked like a piece of paper. Trash. People were such pigs. Reggie, who had been hired to do minor repairs as well as collect the park trash, spent most of his time picking up trash.

The sound of a vehicle caused her to look to the north. From here she could see straight across the canyon to the Pueblo Bonito ruins almost due north. Slightly to the east stood the once proud walls of Chetro Ketl. To the west she could see Pueblo del Arroyo, the location of the only tri-wall structure in the canyon.

The vehicle was Rupert’s shiny Dodge pickup, the newest and nicest of the Park Service units. Being boss had perks.

Rupert’s truck thumped over the Chaco Wash bridge and made the turn into the Rinconada parking lot. He pulled up beside Magpie’s truck and killed the engine. She walked partway down the trail to meet him.

Sunlight drenched his tall body. He had a handsome brown face and powerful eyes. Something about him had always affected her, as if the man broadcast on a frequency that she could detect but not really hear. She never knew what to do with that sense of power that surrounded him. Was it just something that spoke to her subconscious?

“Hey, Magpie, I thought you’d be headed back to the front desk.” He smiled. He wore sunglasses and a black cowboy hat. His green Park Service winter coat sported the official patch on the shoulder. His long legs were encased in slim brown slacks.

“I just thought I’d come back and check. You know, about Dale. Something’s not right about his truck being out here.” She shook her head. “He would have at least checked in.”

Rupert stuffed his long fingers into his back pockets as he turned, looking back at the parking lot. Maggie watched him as he carefully searched the surrounding canyon bottom. “Well, you can never tell with Dale. Rules and regulations have never had much of an impact on his behavior.”

Maggie checked her watch again. “Rupert, I have to get back.” She pointed at the bit of white paper up on the ridge. “You might want Reggie to drop by with his trash truck. That looks like something that blew out of someone’s car.”

“I sent him into town on a ‘gofer’ run. If you wouldn’t mind trotting up and getting that, I’d appreciate it.” He made a face. “I need to look around here a little bit.”

Maggie gave him a cautious look.

Rupert read her expression and laughed. “Probably just a nut call. You know, we get them. Yesterday was Halloween. Some woman just called, asked for the superintendent, then told me that a white guy had fallen through a hole in the past. And that his head was sticking down into the Fourth World where he could see the ancestors.”

A surge of adrenaline tingled Maggie’s veins. “What did she mean?”

“I don’t know.” Rupert squinted up at the sun. “I’ll look around here and see you back at the barn.”

“Right.” Maggie walked back up the trail and spilt off, climbing up to the bit of white paper that the wind
had wedged under a saltbush branch. She crumpled it in her hand and straightened, only to see another twenty paces beyond. Climbing to it, she picked it up. On a whim she plodded to the ridgetop and looked around. Chaco Canyon unfolded before her. Rupert was walking the last of the trail loop through the small houses on the way back to his vehicle. The ruins under the far northern wall gleamed. To the south the rim of Chacra Mesa shone in the midday sun. She could see the ancient Anasazi stairway that led to Tsin Kletsin on the mesa top. At first the oddity didn’t register as she lowered her eyes to the crumbled stone piled on the ridgetop. It was the color rather than the shape that caught her eye. Dark red, wine color rather than buff. Like two juniper stumps, except … then her stumbling mind put it together.

Two bloody feet atop legs stuck out of the dirt.

She screamed,
“Rupert!”

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries

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