“Sure, I know what he’s doing. He’s got people just sitting, watching to see who does what. For the past couple of nights he’s had agents out here, watching the site. The murderer returns to the scene of the crime. Maybe it’ll work, but if he wasn’t such a koyemshi, a clown, with his head stuck in the regulation book, he might have already figured this thing out. He really hates being out here, and it shows.”
Dusty pushed windblown blond hair out of his blue eyes and decided he ought to change the subject. “Did you hear that Carter Hawsworth dropped by to see me. I wasn’t there, but Maureen was.”
Rupert’s brows lifted. “Really? Is he still as much of an asshole as he used to be?”
“Well, Maureen wasn’t impressed with him.”
Rupert shook his head. “Don’t get tied up in messes, Dusty. If you and I meet again twenty years from now, I’d like it to be one of those ‘good to see you’ kinds of meetings rather than the ‘you asshole’ kind.”
“What kind of messes did you have in mind?”
“The kind that gets your friends killed.” He used his chin to point to where Michall and Sylvia slipped under
the ribbon and began hammering in a datum stake, then setting up the transit to grid the site.
“Speaking of friends, I saw Lupe last time I was here.”
“He’s making flutes, can you believe it? Good flutes! He’s selling them to tourists. He’s even got a CD, and sells them in the boutiques up in Taos and over in Durango.” Rupert seemed genuinely pleased. “But then there’s Reggie. Don’t ever have a grandkid, Dusty. The boy’s still not talking to his mother. That’s bad. I don’t care what she did to him, she’s still his mother. But Reggie’s trying. He’s pretty well dried out and cleaned up. He’s even been going down to Zuni to attend the sacred rituals. I think he’s going to be okay.”
“Not everyone has your gumption, Rupert. It’s up to Reggie what he makes of himself.”
“Yeah, but I have to try to help. He fell apart when Sandy died. She was the only mother he’d ever really known. I swear, Reggie was so high on drugs, he didn’t know what he was doing when he broke into all those houses.”
“Well,” Dusty said, and his eyes tightened, “grief makes you crazy.”
Rupert’s wife, Sandy, had died from cancer four years ago. She’d been a good, kind woman. Dusty remembered her shaking a spatula at him one very hungover morning at breakfast, and saying, “
Don’t let nobody tell you that you’re a bad boy, Dusty, ’cause you’re not. You’re just really stupid sometimes.”
He smiled at the memory. He’d been sixteen and what Dale had called “his worst nightmare.”
Rupert watched Nichols reach his car and drive off to intercept Reggie. “You know, sometimes all a kid needs is a chance.”
“Yeah, I do know. I hope it all works out for him.”
Rupert nodded, then a smile brightened his face. “Reggie’s been talking about Maggie. Can you believe
it? I guess he’s trying to get up the nerve to ask her out.”
“She’d be good for him,” Dusty said. But deep down inside he wasn’t so sure about that. Maggie was a traditional with deep-seated Keres beliefs. Not the hell-raiser that young Reggie was. Although, if Reggie really had been trying to get his spiritual life in order down at Zuni, maybe things would work out.
Dusty looked back to watch Maureen drive into the Casa Rinconada parking lot. She parked the blue Bronco beside Michall’s Durango and stepped out. Even over the distance, Dusty felt his heart lift as she started down the interpretive path past Tseh So and toward the ridge overlooking the Casa Rinconada great kiva.
“I think maybe she’s good for you, too,” Rupert said, his brown eyes measuring Dusty’s expression.
“She’s just a friend.” He tried to wave it off.
“I thought you were sharing the trailer?”
“‘Sharing’ is the key word, Rupert.” Dusty tried not to squirm under that intense gaze.
“Does she know how you feel about her?” Rupert asked.
“How do
you
know how I feel about her?”
“I have this sixth sense. It’s an Indian thing, very mystical. All I have to do is see your face light up and, bingo, I can read your mind.”
Dusty folded his arms protectively over his heart. “Well, keep it to yourself. I’m not going to turn a nice friendship into a disastrous romantic interlude that will leave us hating each other.” He paused. “Besides which, she’s still in love with her husband.”
“I remember Dale talking about that.” Rupert kicked at the cold soil. “How long have we known each other?”
“All of my life. Why?”
“All of your life.” Rupert paused and gazed off into the distance. “In many ways, you are like my son,
Dusty. You and Lupe. I remember how the two of you used to play together.”
“Yeah. I remember the time Lupe almost knocked me unconscious with a rock. Great fun.”
Rupert laughed. “Yeah, well, when I see you and Maureen, I say to myself this looks like the right one. Maybe you should listen to your elder, for once? You don’t want to end up like me, old, bitter, and alone.”
Dusty studied Sylvia as she walked across rubble with the transit rod. Her freckled face had gone red in the cold wind. Then his gaze shifted back to Maureen. She lifted a hand and smiled.
Dusty said, “I won’t, Rupert, I promise you that. If the time is ever right, I’ll do everything I can.”
“
Make
the time right, Dusty.” Rupert paused. “Don’t let her get away.”
“Yes, Dad.”
He studied Dusty thoughtfully. “I’m going to tell you the same story I told Lupe and Reggie when they were involved with good ladies, ladies I knew would make them happy, so you’ll really understand. Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, Rupert. Okay.”
“The only woman I ever loved with all my heart left me for another man. I’d like to think it was because I didn’t make enough of an effort to let her know how much of my heart and soul she really had. When she went, I came within a whisker of destroying myself. I wrote to her for years, but all my letters came back marked ‘Addressee Unknown.’ In all of my life, I’ve never completely recovered from what happened with her. Don’t live your life like I’ve lived mine, wasting away over a woman you didn’t do enough to win.”
Dusty looked at Rupert from the corner of his eye. “I thought Sandy was the love of your life.”
“Sandy was my best friend, Dusty, and I loved her very much. But it took Sandy and me years to learn to love each other. Those first few years, every day was
a fight. We worked through it. We raised a good boy. I ate out my own heart when she died. But, no, she wasn’t the love of my life.”
Rupert smiled faintly as a flock of crows wheeled over their heads. His eyes had gone tight. “Don’t think you have all the time in the world, my other son. Because you don’t.”
POLISHED BONE WATCHED the two shabby elders as they stepped out from behind Kettle Town and made their slow and laborious way down the road. As the afternoon sun bore down on his back, the high canyon rim sent its shadow across the crumbled sandstone below.
“When did they get there?” he wondered.
Surely these were not the tricky Mogollon he’d heard of from the tortured youth’s screaming mouth. No sane warrior would wander out into the open knowing that he was being observed the entire time.
And then one of the elders fell.
Polished Bone lifted a lip in a sneer. Made People refugees, no doubt. Perhaps someone Old Pigeontail had told to flee while he was in talking with Browser and his warriors.
Browser, now there was a man Polished Bone would love to meet. Perhaps he’d get his chance tonight, as soon as the cover of darkness masked their white capes.
Browser couldn’t have known that by killing Ten Hawks and Bear Dancer, he had sealed his fate, and the fate of the Katsinas’ People.
One of the elders was stumbling, leaning on the other as they made their way to the crossing where Straight Path Wash cut into the flat canyon floor.
Polished Bone sharpened his attention. The only place they might be able to escape would be in that wash. If they didn’t immediately emerge, then it was a ruse, a party seeking to escape down the sheer-sided arroyo to one of the side canyons.
“Two people,” he murmured thoughtfully to himself. Were they really old men? “Or Browser and Catkin? Cowards! Are you running?”
But no, here they came, struggling up out of the arroyo and staggering onward, their ratty clothes whipped by the west wind. It tugged at their loose white hair.
Polished Bone smiled in grim amusement. That was like Browser, no doubt desperate to save two old derelicts so that they wouldn’t get hurt in the ensuing battle. Shadow had said he was quick of thought, but vulnerable when it came to those under his protection.
The two elders continued their irregular snail’s pace down the road. The journey had taken them nearly a hand of time. Polished Bone shook his head. Fools, they should stop at Talking Stitch village and take cover for the night. If they didn’t, the White Moccasins surely weren’t going to allow them within the safety of High Sun’s walls. Not with what they might learn. And sleeping up on the mesa was brutal this time of the sun cycle.
To his surprise, the two elders didn’t make for any of the small houses that dotted the canyon floor under the cliff. Instead they came straight on for the stairway that he guarded.
“Silly old fools!” Polished Bone left his comfortable vantage point in the cleft in the sandstone and took a more open position where he could see down the stairway. Sure enough, here came the elders. He could see them more clearly now: a man and a woman, old and
frail, their clothing mere rags. Poor things, they were literally pulling each other up the stairway, panting with effort. The man looked the worse for wear, old and crippled, his back bent. An expression of agony marred his wrinkled face. The wind whipped his white hair.
Polished Bone squatted on his heels, absorbed by their struggle up the stairway. He fought the sudden urge to go down and help them. They were going to be coyote meat anyway. Either the frost would get them, or the wind would freeze them, or they’d collapse from exhaustion by the time morning arrived. Besides, they were Made People. Let them take whatever fate the gods decided.
A third of the way up, they stopped, wheezing and panting. The old woman looked up, seeing him skylined. She waved and called in a feeble voice, “Young warrior! Come help your elders!”
“Make it on your own,” he answered. “Unless you’d like to tell me about who is staying in Kettle Town.”
The old man looked up, a hand to his heart. Pain filled his eyes, and the set of his mouth betrayed a desperation that Polished Bone could understand. It was the look that came when hope had vanished like dew in a hot summer drought.
One by one, the elders struggled up the stairs carved so long ago by their ancestors. Arms flailing, the old man missed a step, and the woman caught him a hairsbreadth from falling.
Polished Bone shook his head. He needn’t worry about them discovering his fellows at High Sun. They’d never make it that far before nightfall.
“Why … won’t … you … help?” the old woman gasped between breaths as she neared the top.
“You are not of my clan,” Polished Bone answered, the irony of that being his own personal joke. “Ask your ancestors when you see them.”
Step by step, they made their way up until the old
man reached the worn sandstone flat. There he seemed to melt, curling into a fetal ball. Wind Baby picked heedlessly at his tattered clothing. It looked dusty and moldy, so old that the patterns had faded from the material. It had been a high quality once, many seasons past.
Polished Bone lifted his eyebrows as he watched the old woman bend down to whisper to the old man. In his bony hand, the elder clutched something as though it were the most precious of possessions.
“Warrior,” the old woman said, reaching out to him. “If you will help us, take us to shelter, and feed us, this is yours.” When she opened her hand, Polished Bone started. There, in her palm, lay a polished copper bell.
He stood up, nerves tingling. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s yours if you will help us,” the old woman pleaded.
Polished Bone stepped up and reached for the bell, but she pulled it back in a miserly motion. “Help,” she repeated, her old sad eyes on his.
“Give it to me.” With his right hand outstretched, he fumbled for the war club on his belt with his left. “If you don’t, I’ll just take it from your clubbed bodies. You—”
The old man’s sudden movement caught him by surprise. The elder’s hand whipped up, the clenched fist driving a deer-bone stiletto deep into the hollow under Polished Bone’s ribs. He staggered back, stunned by the pain. His terrified reaction was to slap both hands to the wound as though to press the hot gouts of blood back into his ruptured heart.
“Well done,” the old woman said, her voice clearer, the accent thicker.
“And with pleasure, White Cone.” The old man stood straight now, a smile on his thin brown lips. “Arrogance
and foolishness make a poor mixture, don’t you agree?”
White Cone tossed the polished copper bell into the air and snatched it away as it fell.
The world jerked as Polished Bone stumbled backward and sat down hard. The pain searing his chest became his world. His blood, so much of it, spilled over his hands and soaked the front of his war shirt. The edges of his vision were going gray, hazy. The world spun sideways, and his cheek was against the cold sandstone.
“Give your ancestors my regards,” the accented voice said. “Tell them you are a gift to the Land of the Dead, courtesy of the Bow Society.”
“Well, that’s one,” the old man said. “If you’re up to it, we have two more to go.”
“Next time, you’re the old woman with the bell.”
Polished Bone felt them push his quivering body over the edge, but he didn’t feel the fall, or the smacking impact he made as he landed on the rocks a bow shot below.
NOT MUCH HAPPENED on the first day of digging, which didn’t surprise Maureen. Michall placed her grid over the site and, with the help of the ERT people, got most of the scrubby rabbitbrush and saltbush cleared from the tumbled stone that marked the Bc60 ruin. Surface mapping of the features, the collapsed kiva, and surface artifact recording and collection took the rest of the day.
She watched Dusty pace the perimeter marked by the yellow crime-scene tape, up and back, biting off comments as Michall and her crew followed the instructions of Nichols and the ERT team members.
The next time his path brought him close to her, Maureen said, “It’s a good thing they couldn’t hire you to do this job, eh?”
“What?” he said, irritated. Wind waffled the brown brim of his cowboy hat and flicked the hem of his denim jacket.
“I mean, if you were in charge, this excavation would take twice as long since you’d be arguing every step of the way with the ERT people.”
His blue eyes narrowed. “I’m not that bad. Yet.”
Maureen crossed her arms against the wind’s bite. “Don’t you think Michall’s doing a good job?”
“Of course she is. I trained her.”
“Then just relax and let her work.” She walked up and took his arm, feeling the tension in his swelling muscles. “Let’s take a break. I want to see the sites down here. You can tell me all about the Casa Rinconada great kiva, and why it doesn’t have a great house attached to it.”
Reluctantly, he let her lead him down from the humped shale ridge to the Casa Rinconada kiva. The subterranean ceremonial chamber stretched more than sixty feet across. Snow lined the kiva bottom; it had swirled through the red and black sands to create a beautiful abstract design. Concave drifts scalloped the bench that encircled the structure.
Dusty said nothing. She could see how upset he was; his mind seemed to be locked on some perplexing. problem.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He tugged his gaze away from the kiva, deliberately avoided her eyes, and glared at the rimrock. “Rupert said something this morning that’s been bothering me.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure I want to tell you.”
Maureen shifted. “Then don’t.”
As he turned to face her, a gust flipped his blond hair around beneath the brim of his hat. He squinted
against the onslaught. “He seems to think that we’re perfect for each other.”
Taken aback, she smiled uncomfortably. “Really? What does he know about us?”
Dusty jammed his hands deeply into his coat pockets. “That’s the problem. He doesn’t know anything. It’s not like Rupert to say something like that. He minds his own business. Always has.” His fists strained against his pockets. “Maybe it’s Dale’s death. We’re all strung out.”
She nodded, relieved that he hadn’t said what she’d expected him to. “That’s something we have to watch out for, Dusty. During times of crises people are naturally drawn together. But when the crisis ends …”
The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Right. The Florence Nightingale effect. I only think I’m falling in love with you.”
Maureen had to force herself to take a deep breath. “Dusty, I have feelings for you, too, but this isn’t the time. Maybe in a few months, when your heart is intact—”
“But not now.” He exhaled in relief, smiled, and said, “Thank you, Doctor.”
“You were hoping I’d say that, weren’t you?”
“Very much.”
Maureen laughed and looked across the canyon to the road that led to the Park Service headquarters and Rupert’s office. She could see Nichols’s car where it had pulled up beside Reggie’s green pickup. Strange how memories connected without any apparent rhyme or reason. The feelings stirring within her had reminded her of a phone conversation from long ago. She’d been sitting on the sofa next to John in his tiny apartment in Quebec when he’d called to tell his mother they were going to be married. John had pulled the phone away from his ear when his mother had shouted, “But she’s an
Indian
, dear! Why would you do that?”
Maureen said, “I appreciate the compliment, though.”
“Well, you earned it. Believe me.”
Dusty took his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms over his broad chest, like a barricade. “I’m worried about Rupert. I think this thing may have affected him more than any of us know.”
“He said he’d known Dale for more than forty years. It must be hard.”
Dusty nodded, as though glad to be speaking of something else. “Dale once told me that Rupert was about the smartest man he’d ever known. That once he got over being Indian and Mexican, and just let himself be Rupert, he’d make something of himself. And look where he is now, Dr. Rupert Brown Horse, park superintendent. About to retire with full pension. And he’s been smart, invested wisely. You ought to see the house he has west of Cuba in the foothills. It sits on twenty acres surrounded by timber, has a little creek running through it, and even has a small pueblo that he’s going to dig in his retirement.”
“Good for him.” She stared down at a swirl of snow blowing around the kiva bottom. “Mixed blood is common among my people. We’ve been intermarrying for four hundred years. We just accept it. But in the West, both the western United States and western Canada, it’s different. I think it’s because it’s still new here.”
“We don’t think in … the …” Dusty frowned down at the kiva bottom.
“What’s wrong?”
“That’s not
right
.”
Dusty trotted around to the south and descended the steps down into the kiva. His boots crunched through the snow that filled the hollows of the steps.
Maureen followed him, ducked under the lintel, and stepped onto the kiva floor.