Coyote's Wife (34 page)

“The cave should be up
ahead, at the foot of the cliffs,” he said. “Bring your medicine pouch,” he added.

Ella pulled back her jacket and showed him where she’d attached it to her belt by the leather thongs. He nodded in approval.

They slid down the sandstone side of the arroyo to the bottom, then began the climb toward Hogback. They’d been in the shadow of the ridge since the beginning, but were now so close, half
the sky was blocked by the naked ridge. Going around a curve in the arroyo, they saw a narrow opening below a massive layer of sandstone.

“That should be it,” he said.

Ella drew her weapon, then stepped in front of her brother. It was close to dusk now, and she had no intention of letting her brother lead, unarmed. “If there’s a problem, let me handle it.”

Clifford glanced down at his belt,
calling her attention wordlessly to the sheathed knife attached to his belt.

“I’d rather use the gun and keep our distance,” she said simply. “Stay behind me.”

As they slipped between a tapered crack in the ridge,
only about three feet wide at the base, Ella could see the opening widened farther ahead.

“This is an ’
áńt’íí bahoogan,
a skinwalker’s home,” Clifford said, his voice so soft she
could barely hear. “They built a fire here,” he said, studying the ground and pointing ahead, “but that was weeks, maybe months ago. A lot of sand has blown in since then. You can barely make out where they sat.”

“I agree. This place hasn’t been used recently.” She looked up at the crack in the cavern where the smoke from the fire had been able to escape and saw fine, shimmering threads. “Look
at all the cobwebs up there.” She pointed with a glance, not her hand. “If anyone had been here recently they would have needed a fire, and those webs would have been swept away.”

As she finished speaking, Ella felt something at the tip of her boot and looked down. There was an object buried just below the sand and debris that had filtered inside the cave. Rather than reach down and feel with
her hand, Ella brushed the surface with the tip of her boot. A small dolllike effigy with a turquoise bead imbedded in the area of its heart came to the surface.

“What’s that?” Ella asked her brother.

“They’ll torture the image of the person they want to kill,” Clifford said quietly.

“This doll is very old,” Ella said, bending down to take a closer look. “Something, probably moths or beetles,
ate at the cloth of the dress. The fabric is rotting, too.”

Ella continued looking around as did Clifford, but soon it became very clear that the place hadn’t been actively used in months, if not longer. “Let’s get out of here,” Ella said.

He nodded. “Good idea.”

As they emerged from the cave, Ella caught a flash of light coming from downhill, just inside the limit of the shadows.
Wishing she’d
brought her binoculars, she squinted, trying to determine what was causing that, but it was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. Concluding that it had only been the last rays of light reflecting off something on the ground, maybe broken glass, she dismissed it from her mind.

Ella headed to the tribal unit with Clifford and they were on their way moments later. When they reached the highway,
miles away from the Hogback now, Ella glanced over at Clifford. “So tell me, how does StarTalk connect with the evil ones? I can’t figure out why they’d be taking an interest in this.”

“Neither can I. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with StarTalk.”

Ella didn’t answer. Skinwalkers
never
acted without a clear goal or target, and always focused on what they had to gain from their actions—money,
land, or control over someone. What she had to do next was identify the motive behind their actions at Abigail’s.

By the time she’d dropped her brother off, checked back at the crime scene, filed a report, and driven home, Dawn was in her room, getting ready for bed. Ella could hear Rose speaking to her. Curious, she moved silently down the hall and listened.

“I’m glad you’ve decided not to
go to the Anglo school,” Rose said.

“You don’t like the world outside the Navajo Nation, do you,
Shimasání?”
Dawn asked.

Rose didn’t reply right away. “It’s not so much a matter of like and dislike, granddaughter,” she said at last. “The Anglo world has different values. Their beliefs are not at all like ours. You can see that clearly in their TV shows where the only way a person can win is
to destroy their opposition. The
Diné
are taught to respect the world and others in it because all things
are mutually connected. Everything that happens—whether good or bad—affects something else. That’s something many in the white world have yet to learn. Here, we live in harmony and walk in beauty, protected by our sacred mountains.”

“I like our sacred mountains and knowing that they’re there
for us.
Shimá
told me once about Bears Ears and how it was a place of protection. But I don’t remember all of that story anymore,” Dawn said. “I was just a child then.”

Rose smiled. “Bears Ears should be a constant reminder to all of us to be careful who we trust, and the dangers of bad company.”

“Could you tell me the story?” Dawn asked.

Rose took a deep breath, then in a soft, melodic voice
rich with knowledge passed down through the ages, began. “Long ago, in the time of the beginning, there was a young woman who lived with her twelve brothers. The sister kept their house clean and made a good home for all of them. Then one day Coyote saw her and fell in love. He asked the young woman to marry him. Not really interested in marriage, she gave him a number of nearly impossible challenges
to meet before she’d accept his proposal. She wasn’t at all worried because she never thought he’d be able to complete them. But, as usual, Coyote cheated. He used magic and all kinds of tricks to accomplish the tasks.

“Though she hadn’t seen that coming, the woman was bound by honor to keep her word, so she married old Trickster. As time passed, Coyote’s wife slowly changed. She became more
and more like Coyote, corrupted by the evil in him. She, too, started using magic and trickery to get whatever she wanted. She even learned how to change into a bear—which is how she got her name—Changing Bear Maiden. Before long, Coyote abandoned his wife and took off on more adventures on his own. The wife became bitter, and eventually began to plot against her brothers. She killed four
of them
before the fifth, in self-defense and faced with no other choice, killed her. After she died, her head became Bears Ears. That place is now a reminder to all that although good can overcome evil, it’s often necessary to fight to restore the proper balance.”

“Like
Shimá
does,” Dawn murmured in a sleepy voice.

“Yes, like your
shimá,”
Rose said, then after a pause, added, “It’s stories like these
that make us who we are. If you’d left the reservation, you might have missed out on some of the things good Navajos need to know. That’s why I didn’t want you to go just yet. When you’re older, maybe.”

There was no response, and Ella realized that Dawn had fallen asleep. Moving silently, she stepped over to the doorway, and saw her mother spreading the blanket over her sleeping daughter.

Rose
held a finger to her lips, then went down the hall to wait for Ella in the kitchen.

Ella came in moments later. “I remember when you first told me that story.”

“It seems like only yesterday to me. Now I was able to teach it to your daughter. Our life is good.”

“Yes, Mom, it is,” Ella said, and gave her a hug.

“I’m going to bed. I want to rise early and say my prayers to the dawn,” Rose said.

Ella watched her go. It would probably take years for Dawn to realize how lucky they were to live here. Visitors and tourists came through, and many only saw poverty. But the
Diné
endured because they had the kind of wealth that couldn’t be depleted. The Navajo tribe would continue to exist as long as there was someone to pass on the stories, and others who would listen.

Ella went down the hallway to her room, a cup of camomile tea in her hand. She was tired, but not quite ready to go to sleep yet. As it usually was, she needed time to wind down.

Ella sat down by her small desktop computer and clicked on her e-mail. There was a letter to Dawn from Kevin, and one from an address she didn’t recognize. Since the subject
line read S
KINWALKER
, she opened it immediately.

The letter had also been addressed to Jaime Beyale of the
Navajo Times,
and a local TV station. It accused Ella of being a Navajo skinwalker and a traitor to the police department. But what caught and held her attention was the ultimatum at the bottom. Anger built so fast inside her, her face suddenly flushed with heat as she read the words.

There was no signature, but then again, none was needed. She knew Roxanne had sent it.

A photo below the letter showed Ella coming out of the
’áńt’íí bahoogan
she’d visited with her brother.
She now knew what that flash of light she’d seen on her way out had been—the glass from the telephoto lens of a camera.

She stared at the photo, knowing that it could create all kinds of problems for her. If it was made public, rumors would undoubtedly begin circulating and be nearly impossible to stop.

Anger filled her once again. To arrest Roxanne for threatening a police office would have
required her to produce concrete proof. Yet tracking down the sender’s computer would be almost impossible.

Ella opened her window and took a breath of the cool desert air. Calming down a bit helped her clear her thinking. She’d make time to have a long talk with Roxanne—one on one. Roxanne was clearly unbalanced, yet some spark of decency remained in her or she wouldn’t have bothered sending
Ella a warning.

Ella turned off the computer and went to bed. After staring at the ceiling for a brief eternity, emotional and physical exhaustion took its toll, and she drifted off to sleep.

The following morning, by sunrise, the household was up and bustling. Ella heard her mother in the kitchen, pans rattling. Then she heard Dawn’s bedroom door burst open, hitting the wall behind it, followed
by her daughter’s footsteps racing to the kitchen.

By the time Ella got up and dressed, Boots—Jennifer Clani—had arrived. Rose’s expression was somber as Ella entered the kitchen. One look at Boots, then back at her mother, told Ella instantly that something serious had happened, probably to Rose’s “former friend” Lena.

Dawn chattered away, completely oblivious to what was
happening around her
as they all sat down to breakfast. “I’m going to be late coming home because I’m going to Sara’s house, okay?” Dawn asked no one in particular. “She has this
great
new computer game and she’s going to teach me how to play it.”

Dawn didn’t stop talking until breakfast was over. Once the dishes were put away, Boots checked her watch.

“If you want to arrive at school early today, we’ll have to
leave now,” she told Dawn. Looking at Ella, she added, “They’ve got to take down their science projects so that the gym can be used for P.E. again.”

Boots and Dawn left shortly afterwards. Breaking the long silence that had stretched out between them, Ella looked over at Rose, who was sitting across from her at the table. “I have a feeling Boots said something to you in private this morning.
What’s going on, Mom?”

Rose refilled her teacup. “My former friend has moved away. She’s living in a hogan out on the flat land west of Blanco Trading Post. Many years ago, her aunt moved there after she was diagnosed with cancer. That way when things got bad, she could walk away from the health center and die on Mother Earth surrounded by the sagebrush. I’m afraid my former friend is there for
the same reason.”

Herman came into the kitchen as Rose finished speaking. “If you don’t mend things between you soon, it’ll be too late,” he said quietly.

Rose took a deep, unsteady breath. “The hogan is a long ways from here, at least a three-hour drive. But I’m going to go see her.”

“I’ll go with you,” Herman said. “You’re too upset to make the trip alone. And once you leave the highway,
the road is rough.”

“I’m more than capable of going there and back by myself,” she said firmly.

“Listen to your husband, Mom,” Ella said gently. “This is going to be a hard journey in every imaginable way. It won’t hurt to have company, even if it’s just to have help changing a flat tire.”

Rose considered it for several long moments longer, then at last nodded. “In that case, we’d better get
ready.”

As her mother left the kitchen, Ella noticed how slowly she was moving this morning. She knew without being told that Rose’s joints were bothering her again. Though aging was a natural process, seeing the signs in her mother tore at her heart. Someday, Rose wouldn’t be around. It was inevitable, but the thought left her aching inside, and wishing there was some way to stop the passage
of time.