White Shell Woman

by James D. Doss

  She backed away and posed. “It’s my new hairdo. How do you like it?”

  “Always liked your hair,” he said to the shapely woman. “It’s your best feature.” Almost.

  “She’s been to Colorado Springs,” Parris grumped. “In the ten-dollar-a-minute part of town.”

  “Got my fingernails done too.” Anne displayed a delicate hand.

  “Nice,” the Ute said.

  “And my toenails.”

  Moon looked down his nose at her hand-tooled cowgirl boots. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Parris laughed.

  Anne made a face at both of them, then glanced at the steak. “Did we arrive at supper time?”

  The Ute had not looked a timepiece in the face for three days. “You’re lookin’ at a free man. I eat when I get hungry, go to bed when I’m sleepy.” He stuck a meat fork into the steak, plopped it onto a platter. Then added a dash of salt. “Don’t this look good?”

  She twitched her pretty nose. “It looks raw.”

  “Since my injury, my taste in meat is kinda…” Moon searched for the right word. Found it. “Different.”

  The puzzled woman watched their host leave the kitchen with the platter. He was halfway down the hallway when she called out, “Charlie, where are you going?”

  “Outside.”

  “What for?”

  He seemed not to hear the question. “There’s more steaks in the refrigerator. Why don’t you get some of ’em broiling.”

  She turned to her sweetheart with a worried expression. “Charlie is acting awfully strange.”

  Scott Parris—long accustomed to his friend’s occasional eccentricities—snorted. “Compared to what?”

  “Don’t be flippant,” the pretty woman said. “Poor man has been through a lot. His girlfriend dumped him. Then the head injury.” She nodded to agree with herself. “I think his aunt is right. It’s been too much. Unsettled his mind.”

  “Hmmpf,” Parris said, intending to close the discussion with this observation.

  Anne frowned in the direction of the front porch. “I think you should go check on him.”

  “I think I should tend to my own business.”

  “Then I’ll do it myself.” With a toss of her strawberry mane, his sweetheart charged down the hallway.

  Scott Parris watched her go. Once she had her head, there was no turning her. He opened the refrigerator and sniffed at the pathetic remains of a peach cobbler.

  Anne Foster surreptitiously parted the curtains at a tall window, just enough to accommodate one eye. It was almost dark outside, but she could see Charlie Moon plainly enough. The Ute was stalking back and forth like a caged cougar, the platter of raw meat in his hand. Moreover, he was muttering to himself. Alarmed, she hurried back to the kitchen.

  Scott Parris, who had arranged several steaks on the broiler, looked around to see his intended. Her face wore a peculiar pinched expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Charlie—he’s behaving strangely.”

  “Oh.” Now where does he keep the potatoes.

  Anne’s lip trembled. “Scotty, this is serious.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t call me Scotty.” He opened a cabinet under the sink. “Aha.” Big bag of Idaho spuds.

  She stamped her foot. “Listen to me.”

  This got his attention. And got her a hug. “What’s botherin’ you, darlin’?”

  Anne pointed toward the front porch. “Your best friend is out there with a chunk of raw meat—pacing back and forth like some kind of wild animal.”

  “So?”

  She stared in disbelief. “That doesn’t bother you?”

  This woman sure is pretty when she’s mad. “Should it?”

  “Don’t just stand there—do something.”

  He gave her a long, earnest look. “You want a great big man-sized spud with eight eyes—or a puny little plum-sized tater?”

  Anne wanted to kill him. “I want you to go outside—talk to Charlie Moon.”

  He selected a handsome potato. “Why don’t you talk to him?”

  “Well, I think I’ll do just that.”

  THE ERROR

  Anne Foster paused at the door that opened onto the porch. Called to the man outside. “Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “May I join you?”

  There was no response from Charlie Moon.

  She opened the door. And stepped onto the porch.

  THE SNAKE

  Anne Foster stood very still. She watched the Ute pace back and forth on the long porch. Thick planks squeaked under his boots. From time to time, he would pause to sniff at the beefsteak on the plate. And lick his lips.

  She pulled the jacket tightly around her shoulders. “It’s absolutely frigid out here.”

  “You should go back inside with Scott,” Moon said gently. “I bet he’s in the kitchen. Brewing up some fresh coffee.”

  “Charlie—there’s something I want to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to know that Scott and I are here for you. If there’s anything you’d like to talk about.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Anne hesitated to mention Moon’s former sweetheart. “I know life has been, well—hard on you lately.”

  “Life is tough,” he admitted. And tougher if you’re stupid.

  A shooting star flashed briefly over the mountains. “Oh,” she said, “make a wish!”

  I wish you’d go back inside.

  Anne tried to see his face. The poor man is suffering so terribly.

  Moon seated himself on a pine bench, placed the platter in his lap.

  Now, that’s better. She sat down beside him. “It’s a pretty night.”

  The Ute grunted.

  She sighed. “A night like this makes me feel—so very young.”

  Moon sensed a shadowy presence. “Makes me feel hungry.” He grabbed the raw steak with both hands.

  Anne stared in horror. “Charlie—what on earth are you doing?”

  The Ute snarled. And began to gnaw at the bloody slab of beef.

  A coldness that had nothing to do with the thermometer crept up her spine. “Charlie—please don’t—”

  He glared in her direction with one wild eye. “It’s mine—all mine. You can’t have any.”

  Very deliberately, she scooted away. His aunt was right. Charlie Moon has completely lost his mind.

  He grinned over the steak.

  “Charlie—please stop. You’re scaring me.”

  Being a kind man, he thought about sparing her the inevitable.

  Too late.

  The Big Scare was already coming, hell-bent for red meat. It thumped in on all fours, out of the darkness, ripping along the porch, leaping over her lap, over Moon’s knees—neatly snatching the steak from his grasp.

  Anne threw her arms over her face and shrieked. And shrieked.

  Scott Parris was on the porch in four seconds flat.

  It took the men some time to calm her.

  Anne was finally able to get a few words past trembling lips. “Ohmigod—ohmigod—what was that?”

  “Sidewinder,” Moon said.

  She gasped for breath. “A sn…snake?”

  “Sidewinder’s a dog,” Parris explained soothingly, “just a harmless old hound.”

  Anne glared into the darkness, toward the chewing sounds that were punctuated with satisfied grunts. “A dog? But why did he pounce on us like that?”

  Moon flashed a smile in the darkness. “He wanted the beef I had on my plate.”

  She sat very still for some time. When Anne did speak, her words were crisp and quite to the point. “Charlie—you purposely lured me out here for the scare of my life.”

  “He asked you to stay inside,” Parris reminded his sweetheart.

  “Well, of course he did. Because he knew that would make me want to come out and see what he was up to.” She shot a dark look at her fiancée. “And you were in on it. Up to yo
ur knobby knees. You two are such children.”

  Knobby? “Honest, honey—”

  “Don’t lie,” she snapped. “That just makes it worse.”

  Parris raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “But I didn’t know nothing about—”

  “And don’t use double negatives.” She closed her eyes and cringed. “You know how that grates on my nerves.”

  Moon grinned. “Maybe he means just what he says.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Like he did know something.”

  Parris scowled at his Ute friend. “Please don’t help me, Charlie.”

  “She’s on to us,” Moon said with a solemn shake of his head. “You might as well confess.”

  Scott Parris promised himself he’d get even with the Ute. This pledge made, he gave up the dispute with Anne. He was, he said, very sorry. And would make it up to her. Anything. Imported Dutch chocolates. Two dozen roses. Well…maybe a dozen.

  Anne was slightly mollified by this strategic withdrawal from the field of battle. But one issue still bothered her. “Charlie—why didn’t you just throw the steak to that—that horrible animal?”

  “It isn’t his way.” Moon cast an affectionate glance toward the dark place where the hound was noisily crunching a bone. “Old Sidewinder don’t care for handouts. He prefers to grab his food and run.”

  THE CODE OF THE WEST

  Anne had retired to an upstairs bedroom. The men, bundled up in warm jackets, remained on the porch, seated in sturdy redwood chairs. The corrugated steel roof temporarily blocked their view of the moon as it ascended behind them, but ripples of silver light reflected off the rolling black river. If this were not sweet enough, the mountain lake was transformed into a glassy sea of shimmering quicksilver.

  Time passed slowly, as time should. Charlie Moon and Scott Parris were as content as men can be in this troubled world.

  Parris’s voice cut through the mile-thick silence. “Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re my best friend.”

  “That’s right.”

  Parris smiled in the reflected moonlight. “Bein’ as we’re such good buddies, I think we should talk.”

  “About what?”

  “You know what.”

  “I guess you mean your love life,” the Ute said. “Okay. Pour your heart out. Tell me why you and that redhead haven’t done the big I Do.”

  “None of your business. Besides, that’s not what—”

  “You been engaged for about six hundred years. And me—I’m supposed to be your best man. And your best friend to boot. So if there’s something gone sour, you should tell me.”

  “Well, there’s lots of reasons. If you really want to know—”

  “Never mind. I’m not the sort of man who wants to poke around in his pardner’s private business.”

  Parris choked back a sigh. “Sometimes Anne kinda gets on my nerves.”

  “Gimme a f’r-instance.”

  “Well, she’s always correcting the way I talk. Like I don’t never say nothing right.”

  Moon sighed. “Ain’t that always the way.”

  Parris took a deep breath. “Keep this under your hat—but I found out she’s an English major.”

  “You should not make an accusation like that without evidence.”

  “She keeps the sheepskin hid in a closet. But I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  “When you first met the woman, she should’ve told you about that right up front.”

  They enjoyed a long silence.

  “Charlie, sometimes I wonder if I really want to be married.”

  “Pardner, I’d just as soon you kept all this personal stuff to yourself. It is the Code of the West,” Moon added in a flinty tone. “A real cowboy don’t talk about his woman problems.”

  Scott Parris curtly reminded the Indian that neither of them were cowboys.

  “I got cowboys working for me. So it’s the same difference.”

  THE UTE’S TALE

  Like the black river flooding the earth, Night flowed on toward the west.

  Parris cast a glance at the Ute. “Tell me what happened at Chimney Rock.”

  “Well, it all started about a thousand years ago.”

  “Hold on. Give me the short version.”

  “Okay. I figured out who murdered Julius Santos and April Tavishuts—and came awful close to sending me across the river.”

  “Then I assume you know who’s responsible for Dr. Silk’s death.”

  Moon nodded. “But he’ll never see the inside of a jail.”

  Parris waited. “That’s it?”

  “You wanted the short version.”

  “I would not complain if you fleshed it out some.”

  “Okay. It got started last winter. The archaeologist—Amanda Silk—she was doing some contract work at the Chimney Rock site. One morning, whilst out for a refreshing stroll, she practically stumbles over the edge of that Twin War Gods petroglyph. It takes her most of a week—”

  “Wait a minute—how did you come to know about this?”

  “The more you interrupt, the longer this’ll take.”

  “I retract the question.”

  “Where was I? Oh yeah. One morning last winter, Dr. Silk finds the petroglyph. Takes her most of a week to clean off the topsoil. These archaeologists do things awfully slow.”

  “So do you.”

  “When Amanda Silk is finally able to see the whole picture, she realizes right off she’s found a very unusual petroglyph. She has this funny feeling—like it was trying to tell her something.”

  “About what?”

  “The old legend.”

  “Which old legend is that?”

  “There are several versions,” the Ute said. “But in all of ’em, an Anasazi priest hides something close to Chimney Rock. Something important.”

  “So what does the archaeologist do?”

  “Well, she thinks and thinks and thinks about the petroglyph. But exercising her brain don’t get her nowhere fast. Then, one fine morning after a good night’s sleep, she sits straight up in her bunk and bingo! She knows what the little men in the drawing are trying to tell her.”

  “She comes up with the converging-lines-from-the-spears theory?”

  “You bet. Before breakfast, she goes and makes some sightings. Within an hour, she’s worked out pretty much where the artifact must be buried. Now Dr. Silk has never had a shot at the big time—and this smells like an opportunity to make a big name for herself.”

  “I still don’t see how you know what she smelled.”

  “If you keep making me forget where I was, I’ll have to go back and start over.”

  “I won’t do it again.”

  “Anyway, Dr. Silk makes up her mind to keep this important discovery to herself—at least for a while. So she covers up the petroglyph with the same dirt she’d removed.”

  “To make sure nobody finds it.”

  Moon nodded his black hat. “But the poor woman has a run of hard luck. Wind keeps blowing the dirt off her big secret. She keeps putting it back.”

  Parris sighed. “Life can be tedious.”

  “And it just gets tediouser. Dr. Silk knows she’ll never be able to get a permit to excavate at the pit house. Especially not to look for the legendary Anasazi treasure.”

  “Sounds like she’s in a tough spot.”

  “It does look pretty bad. She needs some kind of legal excuse to dig up this mysterious Anasazi artifact so she can publish a paper about it. Then she has this brilliant notion. Amanda tells the NAGPRA committee that pothunters have been digging in the Chimney Rock ruins. Because she has a contract for dealing with such issues, the committee authorizes her to check out the damage the vandals have done. Now as long as she’s careful, Dr. Silk can dig pretty much where she wants. But she has to be able to make the case that it’s where a pothunter has already dug. If somebody spots her making a fresh hole in the ground, she is in deep trouble. But she’s got one thing working
in her favor. It’ll be several weeks before the site opens for the summertime tourists. So, expecting some privacy, she starts to dig some random ‘pothunter’ holes to make her story hold up in case somebody from the NAGPRA committee eventually shows up to check things out. All the time, she’s getting closer and closer to where she really wants to stick her shovel into the ground.”

  “Sounds like she’s got a pretty good scheme going.”

  “And it could’ve worked. But life is unpredictable, pardner. No matter how careful you lay your plans, something always goes wrong. While Dr. Silk was hard at work one day, I believe she had an unexpected visitor.”

  “That missing horseman?”

  Moon nodded. “Julius Santos went missing before Amanda Silk lied to the NAGPRA committee about the vandals digging at Chimney Rock. I’m betting he showed up and caught her red-handed while she was faking one of those ‘pothunter’ holes. Santos could’ve messed up her whole plan and then some. I figure she spooks his horse—which throws him and runs off. Before Santos can get up, she bangs him on the head with her shovel.”

  Parris could imagine the grisly scene. “Then she drags him to the edge of the west slope, dumps him over. Piles rocks on his body.”

  “She probably planned to bury him more permanently when she got some spare time. But at the moment, Dr. Silk is lots more interested in digging things up than putting them under the sod. Who knows when another unexpected tourist will interrupt her work? So she starts excavating right on the spot where she thinks the Anasazi priest buried his precious whatever. But right away, she has more bad luck, which puts an end to her digging. The Chimney Rock Archaeological Site is opened early for Native American Day. That’s when the little Zuni girl wanders away and finds Amanda’s secret petroglyph.”

  “And the kid shows it to you.”

  “That she did. And now that it’s public knowledge, somebody else is bound to figure out what Dr. Silk already knows. She is pretty upset. She expects either Professor Axton or that paleoastronomer—” Moon searched his injured gray matter for the name.

  “Professor Perkins.”

  “Yeah, Perkins—she expects one of those guys will understand what the spears mean right away. But they don’t. It is a clever graduate student who works things out.”

  “Sure,” Parris said. “April Tavishuts.”