"That sounds like a threat."
"It is a threat."
"In other words, you're abolishing the ground rules."
"I'm writing this book regardless."
"That will make the process far more interesting for me. More hands-on, if you'll pardon the expression. Especially when it's time to talk about the time we spent together."
"Go fuck yourself, Mr. Carlisle!" She stood up, turned her back on him, and stalked over to the door. She had to wait in front of the door for several long moments before a guard opened it to let her out. While she was standing there she glanced back. Behind the Plexiglas barrier he was doubled over. And even though she couldn't actually hear him without benefit of the intercom-the sound nonetheless filled her head and echoed down the confines of the prison hallway long after the heavy metal door had slammed shut behind her.
That ghostly sound was one she would never forget. It was Andrew Philip Carlisle. Laughing.
9
While Mualig Siakam and Old Limping Man were talking, some Indians came carrying a child. The child seemed asleep or dead. The people said she had been that way for a long time. They laid the child on the ground in the outer room of Medicine Woman's house.
Mualig Siakam took a gourd which had pebbles in it that rattled. She took some small, soft white feathers, and she took a little white powder. Then she sat down at the head of the child and she began to sing.
The Indians could not understand Medicine Woman's song because she used the old, old language which is the oneI'itoi gave his people in the beginning. All the animals understand this language, but only a very few of the old men and women remember it.
As Medicine Woman sang, she rattled the gourd which had on it the marks ofshuhthagi — the water-and ofwepgih — the lightning. For a long timeMualig Siakam sang alone, but when the people who were sitting around had learned the song, they sang with her.
And then Medicine Woman took some of the white feathers and passed them softly over the child's mouth and nose. She passed the feathers back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes she passed the feathers down over the child's chest. Then again she passed them back and forth across the child's face.
And the face of the child changed. Her body moved. Medicine Woman gave a silent command to the child's mother, who brought water. The child drank, and everyone looked very pleased.
The next morningOld Limping Man went to the house ofMualig Siakam. Medicine Woman was feeding the child, who was sitting up. And that day, the child's people took her home.
Halfway to the highway, walking in scorching midday heat, Manny Chavez took a detour. The wine was gone. He was verging on heatstroke. In the end it was thirst and the hope of finding water that drove him off-track.
Under normal circumstances, no right-thinking member of the Desert People would have gone anywhere near the haunted, moldering ruins of the deserted village known as Ko'oi Koshwa — Rattlesnake Skull. An Apache war party, aided by a young Tohono O'othham woman, a traitor, had massacred almost the entire village. The only survivors, a boy and a girl, had sought refuge in a cave on the steep flanks of Ioligam several miles away.
More recently, in the late sixties, a young Indian girl named Gina Antone had been murdered there. Anthony Listo, now chief of police for the Tohono O'othham Nation, had been a lowly patrol officer during that investigation. From time to time, he had been heard to talk about the girl who had been lured from a summer dance to one of the taboo caves on Ioligam, where she had been tortured and killed. Her body had been left, floating facedown, in the charco — a muddy man-made watering hole-near the deserted village itself.
A whole new series of legends and beliefs had grown up around that murder. The killer, an Anglo named Carlisle, was said to have been Ohbsgam-Apachelike. People claimed that the killer had been invaded by the spirits of the dead Apaches who had attacked Rattlesnake Skull Village long ago.
All the caves on Ioligam were considered sacred and off-limits. They had been officially declared so in the lease negotiations when the tribe allowed the building of Kitt Peak National Observatory. In the aftermath of Gina Antone's death, however, the caves close to Ko'oi Koshwa became taboo as well. People said Ohbsgam Ho'ok — Apachelike Monster-lived there, waiting for a chance to steal away another young Tohono O'othham girl. Parents sometimes used stories about the bogeyman S-mo'o O'othham — Hairy Man-to scare little boys back in line. On girls they used Ohbsgam Ho'ok.
Manny Chavez, thirsty but no longer drunk, considered all these things as he headed for the charco near what had once been Rattlesnake Skull Village. It was late in the season. Most of the other charcos on the reservation were already dry and would remain so until after the first summer rains came in late June or July. But no one ran any cattle near Ko'oi Koshwa. Without livestock to reduce the volume of water, Manny reasoned that he might still find water there-at least enough to get him the rest of the way to the highway.
Earlier, as Manny walked, he had heard and seen a four-wheel-drive vehicle making its way both up and down part of the mountain. Suspecting the people inside of being Anglo rock-climbers, Manny had given the tangerine-colored older-model Bronco a wide berth. He'd be better off on the highway, trying to hitch a ride in the back of an Indian-owned livestock truck, than messing around with a carful of Mil-gahn.
Now, though, as Manny approached the charco, he was surprised to see that same vehicle parked nearby. A man-an Anglo armed with a shovel-was digging industriously in the dirt. Manny may have been nawmki — a drunkard-but he was also Tohono O'othham, from the top of his sand-encrusted hair to the toes of his worn-out boots. The thought of this Mil-gahn blithely digging for artifacts on the reservation offended Manuel Chavez.
"Hey," he shouted. "What are you doing?"
The man with the shovel stopped digging and looked up. "You can't dig here," Manny said. "This is a sacred place."
For a moment the two men stared at each other, then the Anglo, who was much younger than Manny, climbed out of the hole he was digging in the soft sand. He came at Manny with the shovel raised over his shoulder, wielding it like a baseball bat.
There was no question of Manny standing his ground. He looked around for a possible weapon. Off to his right was a small circle of river rock surrounding a faded wooden cross, but the rocks were too far away and too small to do him any good. Turning away from the Mil-gahn's unreasoning fury, Manuel Chavez tried to run. He tripped and fell facedown in the sand.
The first blow, the only one he felt, caught him squarely on the back of the head.
David Ladd lay in the darkened hotel room waiting to fall asleep and grappling with the overwhelming fear that another panic attack would come over him and catch him unawares. The plague of attacks and dreams had left him feeling shaken and vulnerable. He knew now that another attack was inevitable. The only question was, when would it come? What if it happened while he was with Candace? What would she think of him then? He was young, strong, and supposedly healthy. This kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen to people like him, but it was happening.
At last, emotionally worn and physically exhausted, David Ladd fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Sometime later, he was jarred awake by the sound of a key in the lock and then by the opening door banging hard against the inside security chain.
"David," Candace called through the crack in the door. "Are you in there?"
Groggily, he staggered over to the door and unlatched the chain. "It's you," he mumbled.
Dropping several shopping bags to the floor, Candace stood up on tiptoe and kissed him. "Who else did you think it would be?"