“No one ever sees who does it. When it happens to you, you move your claim and they leave you alone.”
“Then they take over the claim?”
“No one takes it.”
Shan considered the reply a moment. “It’s as if you were just getting too close to something they don’t want you to see.”
“That’s what I thought. But they’ve all been in different places. Once up against the wall that divides the mountain. Once in a small grove of trees by an old painted rock. Once at the edge of a cliff. There’s enough gold, enough room, so it’s not worth it to try to oppose whoever is doing it.”
“But then those two men died.”
The man inhaled deeply on his cigarette, studying Shan. “A day after the murders I was on a high trail, walking along the top of a slope almost as steep as a cliff, when I saw two men above me, maybe three hundred yards higher up. I ducked into the shadows and didn’t think they noticed me. They were carrying heavy loads wrapped in cloth, on shoulder poles. One of them dropped something that rolled down the trail toward me. Round as a ball, in a burlap sack. It rolled almost to me before it fell off the trail and bounced into the gully far below. Some use twine to mark out their claims. I figured it was a ball of twine until it fell out of its sack. . ”
“But it wasn’t twine,” Shan said as he gently eased the man’s foot back into his boot, lacing it loosely. He lifted the man’s staff and began working on it with his pocketknife.
“It wasn’t anything I ever want to see again. It had been pounded by the rocks, as if someone had played soccer with it. I looked up and one of the men was studying me with binoculars. I leaped up and ran down the slope like some damned fool. That’s when I twisted my foot.”
“The head in the bag,” Shan said. “Young or old?”
“It’s not like I had time to study it. But I saw some gray hair.”
So two men had been involved in the killings, and they had cut the bodies up to dispose of them. “Where would you go, if you had something like that to get rid of?”
“Right about where they were. There’s a crack in the cliff that goes down deeper than anyone can see.”
“The cliff where a miner was chased away from his claim?”
The man thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, yes, it was the same place.”
“Did you recognize the men?”
“They were too far away. But they had binoculars. They saw me.”
Shan kept whittling on the staff. “Were you here last year when a man was killed?”
“That’s over and done with.”
“What do you mean?”
“The son of a bitch was a claim jumper. We found claim sticks taken from four of us at his camp. No one was sorry to see him disappear. But it spooked us.”
“You mean because of the way he died?”
“Because he was found in front of one of those paintings of demons, the one of the blue bull, and there was fresh blood on the painting, as if the demon had come to life. Because his hands were cut off. But that’s ancient history. Captain Bing proved who the killer was and chased him off.”
It was Shan’s turn to look up the trail in alarm. “Captain? You mean the army was involved?”
The miner offered a sour grin. “Call it the miners’ militia. Bing discovered that the man’s own partner had killed the claim-jumping bastard. Later, the dead man took care of things.”
“The dead man?”
“We buried him in a shallow grave under a mound of heavy rocks. Two weeks later a skeleton appeared, draped over the grave. Some said the dead man rose up from the grave, that he was too angry to stay buried before obtaining vengeance. But then we saw the skeleton’s fingers.”
“The fingers?”
“One of them held his partner’s ring,” the man said with a shudder. “The skeleton was that of the dead man’s partner, who’d killed him. I saw it with my own eyes. The dead man did rise up and take revenge. No one goes near there anymore. We know better than to interfere with the business of the dead.”
“Where exactly is this no-man’s-land?”
“The grave is on a long black ridge that juts out to the west. About a mile north of Little Moscow.” The man saw the confusion on Shan’s face. “And if you don’t know about that already, you don’t want to know. They don’t take to strangers. Captain Bing organized things last year after those killings.”
Little Moscow. Captain Bing. The lonely mountain was becoming more crowded all the time.
“Don’t mess with Bing. He’ll chew you up and spit out your bones.”
“So at least one man was killed last year. And two men were murdered last week. Was there anyone else?”
“Why do you care?”
“I collect stories about the dead. Something I started in prison.”
The miner contemplated the point for a moment, glanced at his expertly bound ankle, and nodded. “A young miner, a newcomer barely out of his teens, was killed in front of a painting of a blue bull demon. The body disappeared so fast no one knows for certain what happened. Only one other miner saw it before it was carried away. Ugly business. He said at first he thought the boy was just lying down, smoking a cigar.”
“A cigar?”
“But when he came close he saw it was a small stick, jammed into the boy’s dead mouth. Not a claim stick. It had eyes carved into it. It scared everyone, because of all the other things that happen on this mountain.”
“You mean the skeletons.”
“Skeletons. Ghosts. Those damned paintings. People say this is where all the old demons come, to hide from the rest of the world, that the demons in the paintings come to life at night.”
Shan handed the man the staff he had been working on. He had cut off some of the stubs protruding from the juniper limb and turned the top joint into a smooth, curving cradle. The staff had become a crutch.
The man accepted it with an approving nod, then rummaged among the packs on the mule. “If you don’t take something it’ll jinx me.” He extracted a small blue nylon pouch tied with a drawstring, hesitated, then tossed it to Shan. “Take it. Not my kind of trinkets.” He avoided Shan’s gaze now, tending to his packs, talking soothingly to his animals. He seemed grateful to be rid of the little blue sack.
“After this fork in the trail,” Shan said, “the quickest way down is straight, past Drango. It is why your mule stopped here. It knows the way.”
“Not today,” the man said, with a wary glance in the direction of the village. “If you see that prick Chodron, give him a message,” the miner said as he rose. “Tell him I left his payment on the trail.” He hobbled away, using more of the grass to coax his mule onto the side trail.
Shan waited until the man was fifty yards away before sitting and emptying the sack onto the ground. In it was a small plastic thermometer with a ring by which it could be attached to a lanyard and a small stack of papers bound with a rubber band. Each was covered with little round discs with adhesive backing, in half a dozen colors. A small pencil sharpener. Three identical screwtop brown plastic containers. The first contained matches, the second a variety of medicinal tablets, and the third was apparently empty.
He laid his discoveries on a rock, studying them, trying to understand what he saw. At last he picked up the thermometer and read it. The degrees were marked in Fahrenheit, only in Fahrenheit. It had belonged to someone from America.
Nothing appeared to have changed when he entered the village. But when the guard at the stable door hesitantly lifted the bar for Shan something seemed to be blocking the door from the inside. “One moment,” he heard Lokesh say, and seconds later the door opened and his old friend motioned him inside. The stranger lay flat. Gendun, at his head, looked frail. The lama’s arm trembled where the electrodes had been attached. But Gendun was steadily murmuring his prayers. Dolma, nearby, worked a small wooden churn.
At the sound of the bar dropping into place Dolma stopped and Lokesh bent to a cluster of butter
lamps he was using to heat a tin kettle. Dolma extended a hand and the stranger grasped it, pulling himself up as he fixed Shan with bright, intelligent eyes.
“Tashi delay,” Shan ventured, offering the traditional greeting.
“He doesn’t understand us,” Lokesh said. “He speaks one of the ancient tongues.”
“Ni hao,” Shan tried, switching to Chinese.
“Ya’atay,” the stranger said. It was neither Tibetan nor Chinese, nor any language Shan knew.
“I am called Shan,” he continued in Chinese, pointing to himself.
“Ni. . hao,” the stranger offered in a slow, uncertain voice, then switched to his strange tongue. “Hostene,” he said, pushing a thumb toward his chin. Dolma busied herself at the little churn and soon handed the stranger a cup of buttered tea, which he eagerly raised to his lips and tilted down his throat. A moment later he gagged, coughed, and set the cup down, holding his belly. This Tibetan who spoke the ancient Tibetan tongue was not familiar with the traditional Tibetan drink.
Shan studied the bench where Dolma had churned the tea, then chipped off a corner of the brick of black tea she had used, dropped it into another cup, and filled it from the kettle without adding butter or salt. He extended the cup to the man, who hesitantly accepted it, sniffed the contents, and tested it with a cautious sip.
“A’hayhee,” the man said. The gratitude in his tone needed no translation. He drained the cup, then became aware of Gendun’s eyes fixed on him. The lama, Shan saw, was seized with intense curiosity, a mix of confusion and fascination. The stranger awkwardly pressed his palms together, fingers extended, the traditional offering of respect.
Gendun cocked his head first to one side then the other. “If the gods are trying to take us to a new place,” he said in a quizzical, excited tone, “why would they use our old words?”
Shan watched in mute confusion as the lama reached inside his sleeve and produced the stub of a pencil. On one of the smooth planks leaning against the wall he drew something, then set it in front of the stranger. Surprisingly, it was a fish. Not any fish, but the traditional image of the leaping golden fish, representing spiritual liberation, one of the Eight Auspicious Signs sacred to the Tibetans.
The stranger rubbed his head a moment, gazing uncertainly at his companions, then accepted the pencil offered by Gendun and ran his fingertip over the image in the same way Lokesh did with unfamiliar images. The silence was that of a teaching, when novices waited for the slow word of an old lama. At last he lifted the pencil and drew an object opposite the fish on the plank, something that might have been a stalk of corn.
Gendun ran his own fingertips over the new image, then drew another of the sacred symbols. A lotus flower, sign of purity. The stranger made another. A bundle of arrows.
A sigh of wonder escaped Lokesh’s lips. Gendun sketched still another of the eight sacred signs. A treasure vase, repository of the jewels of enlightenment. The stranger sketched. A rainbow. Gendun drew again. A wheel of dharma. With a somber gaze the stranger once more bent over the plank. When he had finished Shan saw Lokesh’s eyes grow round. The man had drawn the zigzag snake, the thunderbolt serpent that they had seen drawn in blood. “The gods are making a proposal,” the old Tibetan exclaimed, then his face sagged. “But I don’t know what it is.”
As his friends bent over the sketch, Shan stepped to a corner, where sunlight leaked through cracks in the plank wall. He pulled from his belt the pouch given him by the fleeing miner, kneeled, and extracted the brown plastic jars, realizing he had not opened the one he had assumed to be empty. He had been wrong. It was filled with small colorful feathers. He unscrewed the container with the medicine. It contained two types of pills, neither of them the small white tablets strangers often brought to Tibet for altitude sickness. He discovered a slip of paper tucked so tightly around the inside of the jar that he had not noticed it on his first examination. With a finger he pried at it, discovering there were in fact two slips, both drug prescriptions. One was for methotrexate, the other for leucov-orin calcium. Along the top of each slip ran a legend in ornate silver letters. Monument Pharmacy, Shiprock, New Mexico.
For several minutes Shan continued to watch the silent, energetic exchange between his two Tibetan friends and the stranger, his mind racing. The riddles of Sleeping Dragon Mountain never generated answers, only more riddles. Finally he poured another cup of black tea and squatted by the trio.
Shan said in English as he extended the cup to the man, “I hear there are more Tibetan scholars in America than in China.”
At the sound of the English words the stranger’s jaw dropped. His reply came out in a dry and cracked voice, but it was understandable. “I have never met a Tibetan who spoke English.”
“I am Chinese,” Shan said, returning the man’s grin.
“I am called Hostene, Hostene Natay.” The man looked about, studying each of them in turn. “I guess you saved my life.”
“Lha gyal lo,” Lokesh whispered, the words echoed by Dolma a moment later. Gendun, his hand pressed to his side as if he was in pain, offered a serene smile, then gazed at the plank with the drawings.
They spoke rapidly for a quarter hour, Shan pausing to translate for his friends until Hostene discovered both Gendun and Lokesh spoke Chinese. In slow, clumsy Mandarin, with many apologies for not having kept it polished since learning it in the US Army many years earlier, he explained that he was a retired judge from New Mexico in the southwestern United States. Lokesh gave Shan no chance to ask Hostene about the murders, instead peppering him with questions about the stick figure, the lightning bolts, and the dialogue in symbols he had carried on with Gendun.
“It is why we are here,” Hostene explained. “To unlock the links between the Tibetans and my people.”
“Your people?” Shan asked.
“The Dine. The Navajo.”
Shan had a vague recollection of the term. “You mean Native Americans?”
“There are many names for the tribes that first inhabited North America. First Nations. Original Peoples.” Hostene pressed his hand to his temple. “The people to whom the gods entrusted the continent.” His wry tone did little to conceal his obvious pain. “My tribe is the Navajo.”
He closed his eyes a moment. “I don’t remember how I got here. I was sleeping. Someone walked through the trees and stepped on a branch. I rolled over and something hit me on the head.”
Shan asked, dreading the answer, “Who else was with you?”
“A retired professor from Beijing, Professor Ma Hopeng, and a young Tibetan guide. We met in Chamdo.” Hostene paused, looking toward the door with anxious eyes. “Where are they?” he asked urgently. “I must see them.”
Shan and Lokesh exchanged a glance.
Hostene struggled to rise, then slumped forward. He seemed to be losing consciousness again. “The boy is covered in blood!” he groaned. “Warn her, up on the mountain!” His eyelids fluttered and shut, and he dropped back onto the pallet.
“The mountain deity,” Lokesh concluded. “He wants to warn the mountain deity.”
As they rolled him onto his back, Hostene came to life again, resisting their efforts, trying to get to his feet. He was perhaps fifteen years older than Shan but, at least for the moment, seemed to have the strength of a man in his prime.
“They are beyond our help,” Shan told him. “There are words you might wish to say for them. Gendun has been offering prayers for them.”
Hostene looked at Shan, seeking comprehension. Shan caught him as he sagged and lowered him back to the pallet.
“Something happened that night,” Shan said. “You were found covered with blood, sitting against a rock. You are the only survivor.”
Hostene lowered his head into his hands. No one spoke. Dolma lit another stick of incense.
“I was in my sleeping bag,” the Navajo finally whispered. “The sun had not yet risen. I turned and. . that’s all I can recall. Who?” he asked. “Why?”
“
We don’t know,” Shan admitted.
“The police?”
“No government reaches here.”
Time passed. “She said she was going to close the circle between two peoples,” Hostene finally said in a grief-stricken voice. “She was so excited about her discoveries. So full of life. I used to say she was like one of the wild mustangs we sometimes glimpsed in the arroyos.”
Shan could not make sense of the Navajo’s words.
When Hostene looked up, tears were streaming down his cheeks. “What will I tell my sister when I see her in the night?”
“Your sister?”
“Abigail was my niece. Her friends begged her not to try this, not to come so far. I told her that if she insisted I would accompany her, to watch over her. And now I’ve let her be killed.”
“But only two bodies were found,” Shan said in confusion. “Neither was that of a woman.”
Hostene grabbed Shan’s wrist. “Abigail! Where is she then?” He had realized that his niece might be alive, alone on the mountain where a murderer was at large.
The door opened. Shan crossed the floor an instant too late. The guard took one look at Hostene, gasped, and with a swift, panicked motion tapped the side of the Navajo’s head with his club. Hostene collapsed to the floor.
* * *
“Gasoline.” it was Chodron’s only greeting when he finally opened his back door to Shan an hour after dawn the next day. The headman, wearing a sleeping robe, handed Shan an empty gas can and pointed to a small lean-to shed built against the house. Inside the shed was a barrel with a hand pump screwed into the top.
Hostene’s scalp had been cut open by the guard’s club. He had drifted in and out of consciousness most of the night, nursed by Dolma and by Lokesh, who mixed healing teas from the little bag of herbs he kept on his belt. At times Hostene seemed to have the same ageless vitality as his two Tibetan friends, at others his body was as weak as an infant’s.
“He may die,” Shan said as he handed the filled gas can to Chodron, who now wore a blue dress shirt and black trousers, as if he were attending a Party meeting.
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