by Siena West
“You need to marry again, Grandson. Make more babies, keep your clan and your wife’s clan strong.”
Gray Dawn grunted, stuffing down another dumpling to avoid replying. How could he tell her he had not forgotten Many Bright Colors’s death and still grieved for their unborn son? They lived in his heart, and he would not seek to replace them until the hurting stopped. The other men did not understand his behavior. Why would a young, handsome widower not seduce as many women as he could? It was difficult to explain.
Grandmother lived in one of the oldest parts of the pueblo, and many abandoned houses were near her home. Despite the isolation, she refused to move to be near her daughters and certainly would not move in with one. Good memories of the days when her husbands were alive and her children were babies filled her home. She would not leave until it was time for them to dress her in her wedding garments and see her to the Land of the Dead.
Gray Dawn sat in a corner of the room that served all Grandmother’s needs—where she cooked, visited with her family and friends, and slept. A smaller room in back was a storehouse where she kept her basket-weaving materials, her meager stores of corn, beans, and dried squash, and other household commodities. By habit, Gray Dawn sat facing the door. It made him feel vulnerable if he sat with his back to it.
As he ate, half listening to Grandmother’s nattering, other matters occupied his mind. Since the recent strange events, such as the bloody spring that threatened the well-being of the entire village, he had been watching and listening. He kept out of the way and tried to be unobtrusive, looking for anything unusual as he went about his daily tasks. He was seeking signs that evil was abroad in the village. The people had worked together to clean the spring, and the doctors and priests labored for days making prayer sticks and performing cleansing rituals. The water ran clean now, but people still feared the Two Hearts—the witches who had turned the spring to blood. Gray Dawn was hoping to find something that would lead him to the sorcerers in the village.
It was a warm, late-summer evening, and to let in air, the old lady had pulled away the hide that covered the door. Soon the nights would be chilly, but now, it was warm. Gray Dawn stopped in mid-bite as coldness suddenly enveloped him—a coldness greater than ice. Shivers shook him from head to feet. Grandmother stopped talking; she also must have felt the cold.
He lifted his eyes to the rectangle of black marking the open doorway. Three pale faces floated there disembodied, their eyes flaming red. Perhaps it was only light reflecting from the fire. Gray Dawn leaped to his feet and ran to the door, fists bunched and ready to punch at what were surely monsters. As he reached out to strike, the faces evaporated.
Standing in the courtyard outside the house, he peered in all directions, seeking the unwelcome visitors. Then he heard a rustling of wings. Not ten feet from him, three great horned owls materialized from nothing. They were taking flight, their broad wings lifting them into the air, their taloned feet tucked against their bodies.
Grandmother followed him as quickly as her wizened body allowed, calling to him, her voice querulous. “What is it, Grandson? What did you see?”
Gray Dawn watched the owls fly away, chilled to the bone. The owls’ wings made no sound as they disappeared into the night. At the spot where the owls had lifted into the sky, he found a single feather on the ground, shining in the starlight. When he picked it up, it seemed to melt away in his hand. Grandmother found him standing there, looking from his empty hand to the empty sky.
* * *
Gray Dawn walked to his father’s house, peering with fear into the gloomy corners of the village as he picked his way over the stony paths. Green Spring lived near the plaza, an important place befitting an officer of the Soyal. Gray Dawn announced his arrival politely, nodding to his father. His wife rose to welcome him. Small Deer was not his mother—she had died of an illness years ago—but Small Deer always treated him kindly.
“Have you eaten?” she asked, smiling.
“I have, Small Deer, thank you. But I will take a bowl of cool water, please.” Fear and the warm night had narrowed his throat.
He told his father what happened at Grandmother’s house. “Don’t leave her alone,” Gray Dawn said. “The Two Hearts are observing her, no doubt planning something wicked.”
Green Spring chuckled. “Your grandmother is the fiercest one in this village. Has she not outlived two husbands, borne seven children, four of whom still live, and is now grandmother and great-grandmother to what seems to be dozens?” He smiled at Gray Dawn. “She has never been sick, and she can still see well enough to weave the finest baskets in the village. She will be all right.”
Gray Dawn started to interrupt, but his father had made a decision. “But you, Gray Dawn, will attend closely to Grandmother, and I will have the priests prepare charms to hang in the roof beams to keep her safe. I will also make prayer sticks for her myself. It should be enough.”
None of this convinced Gray Dawn. But one does not go against a father’s decisions.
Chapter 21
Gunfire
The season had begun the downhill slide toward its inevitable end. Maggie’s research was winding down, too. She had only a few precious Saturdays to ride the backcountry with Cole. The young woman was a walking, breathing ball of anxiety, sure that her work wasn’t going fast enough, and she wouldn’t have enough data to finish her dissertation. Maggie’s temper had been short for the last few days, and Cole tiptoed around her as they saddled the horses, loaded the saddlebags, and set out after breakfast.
That day, Maggie intended to survey an unnamed canyon intersecting Oak Creek. They planned to ride up the canyon until it was too rough for the horses. The topographic map showed an intersection with another canyon a few miles from the mouth. It seemed a likely stopping point. If they had found nothing when they reached the junction, they’d turn around and head back.
At first, the canyon bottom was wide and sandy. It was slow going for the horses, and they had to be careful not to overtax the animals and risk blowing a tendon. As they continued, the canyon narrowed, and the walls grew higher and steeper. Before long, they steered the horses around great chunks of rock that had tumbled from the cliff faces. Talus slopes of boulders and brush flowed off the canyon walls.
“Hey, Cole,” Maggie called out, cheerful once more. Her temper had improved in the fresh air and the sweet scent of horse sweat. She rode in front, her hair gleaming like fire in the sun. “Check out the tracks and poop. Somebody’s been here ahead of us.”
Horse or mule tracks and fresh droppings littered the canyon bottom. The tracks were heading the same direction as Maggie and Cole.
“Cowboys,” Cole said.
“You think? This is rugged country for cows.” Cattle preferred the open flats around water tanks and salt licks.
“Somebody’s chasing a stray, I bet. Maybe a lost baby calf that got separated from its mama. I bet we run into the cowboys somewhere ahead.”
About every quarter-mile, Maggie called a halt to sweep the cliff faces with binoculars.
“There won’t be anything prehistoric here,” Cole said. “Cliff dwellers built in south-facing rock shelters.”
“You know I don’t care about prehistoric stuff. An Apache ritual or burial site might be in any old cave or rock shelter. We might even find a storage cist.”
Boulders and cobbles worn smooth by the tumbling action of water that poured down the cleft during rainstorms choked the canyon bottom. Maggie and Cole stopped to let the horses drink their fill from one of the shallow pools left by the last storm. They didn’t know if they would find more water ahead. The air was thick with the herbal tang of riparian vegetation.
Not for the first time, Cole wondered what they would do if a storm arose. The local storms weren’t the ones that trapped people in flash floods, he knew—it was those miles away, in the mountains that the canyons drained. In the canyon bottom, they would neither see nor hear a storm to th
e north—until it was too late.
He could not know other dangers were facing them today.
The two rode on as the day warmed, and the sun reflected off the rock walls, making it even hotter in the canyon bottom. At last, Cole could stand it no longer. “Maggie, stop and get off that damned horse. I’m hot, dying of thirst, and starving!”
They loosened the cinches and let the horses browse in the scrubby willows. Sitting where the cliff face curved outward, casting a slice of shade, they ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tried to stretch out the kinks. Cole had discovered that the muscles used for riding differed entirely from those necessary for archaeological fieldwork.
The canyon was silent—no canyon swifts calling and swooping, no hawks rising on updrafts. An eerie feeling of isolation surrounded them.
“The invisible cowboy must have scared away all the critters,” Cole said, laconically rubbing a sore calf muscle.
“Maybe a mountain lion or bobcat is around somewhere. Give you a chance to practice your he-man skills, Cole buddy. Save the damsel in the wilderness and all.”
He stretched out a leg and kicked her in the thigh. “Maggie, you’re about as much a damsel as I am.”
She smirked. They packed up the remains of lunch, tightened the cinches, and mounted.
* * *
Maggie never saw the snake. Cole watched helplessly as her horse shied away, then reared and bucked. She lost her stirrups and went sailing, landing in sand. Just a few feet one way or the other, and she would have fallen onto a boulder. Cole shuddered to think what might have happened.
Cole leaped off his horse and scrambled to pull Maggie away from the rattlesnake that was coiled and ready to strike. Its furious buzz, magnified and sharpened by the bare rock, filled the air.
“Check to see if you busted anything,” he ordered. “I’m gonna kill this little bastard.” The snake’s triangular head rose from the bunched coils of its body, and its tongue licked the air. Lacking a gun or a shovel, he would make do with a rock. He chose a good-sized one and aimed with care. The snake uncoiled so fast it was almost comical. Another well-placed rock crushed the snake’s head.
Maggie’s furious and inventive cursing told him she was unhurt. “Why is a goddamn rattler here in the middle of the day? It’s too fucking hot for snakes to be out!”
She shifted from foot to foot and stretched her arms experimentally. “I’ll have spectacular bruises,” she said when the curses died. “But I’m more embarrassed than hurt. I always thought you would be the one to fall off your horse.”
Cole grinned and wiped away smudges of dirt on her face with his bandanna. “Mags, you look like shit.” He did not mention the tears welling in her eyes. “That snake was pissed off before we got here. Maybe the invisible cowboy startled it.”
“They say it’s always the second in line who gets bitten.” Maggie’s heartbeat was almost back to normal. “At least I didn’t scream,” she said with pride, shaking the twigs out of her hair. “Let’s go find my stupid, shithead horse.”
* * *
The stupid, shithead horse was a quarter-mile ahead, head down and reins dragging, cropping the bunch grass. Maggie was slow to get on board and lobbed curses at the animal. The pair continued up the canyon, but both thought they could not ride much farther if they were to get back to the truck before dark.
The afternoon had grown hotter still, and the high walls shut out any hint of breeze. In the evening, the canyon would be a funnel for cold air draining off the mesa top, but now, it was stuffy and miserable. No wonder the snake was mad.
Maggie and Cole reached the turning point where the two canyons met. It was a boulder-strewn swath of sand. Iron oxide and manganese streaked the broken, vertical cliff face. Shrubs and cactus that had somehow gained a purchase in the living rock pockmarked the cliff with green.
“Cole, check out that green spot upstream.” Maggie pointed to a seam where the upper canyon face joined the talus slope. The seam was green with young oaks and shrubs. “If that’s an overhang, it’s a likely spot for a cave or rock shelter.” Her voice echoed off the cliff face, amplified in the silent afternoon.
Cole climbed off his horse and adopted the archaeologist’s pose, head down, searching the sand. “Hey, look—there’s a bunch of sherds here. I bet they washed down from upstream. There’s bound to be a site just up the canyon.”
“Not Apache, though, if the sherds are a clue. Let’s check it out, anyway. One of us should find a site, and I’ve come up with zip today.”
Maggie took a photograph of the intersecting canyons to help them locate the line of greenery that might mark an overhang and a site should they come back.
They hadn’t ridden far, the horses trudging through the deep sand, when Cole felt rather than heard something swoosh past his head, disturbing the heated air. The peculiar hiss and thump of a projectile burying itself in sand followed, and then a sharp crack that echoed around the canyon walls. He saw the next bullet strike the sand in front of him. It was gunfire—someone was shooting at them and coming way too close.
Chapter 22
Hiding
“Son of a bitch, that’s gunfire! Maggie, get down!”
Cole’s horse began crow hopping as another bullet plunked into the sand. Unable to hang on, Cole slipped off, and although he grabbed for the reins, the frightened horse pulled away. The animal churned up sprays of sand as it headed furiously back the way they had come. Cole dropped low to the ground and was looking around for Maggie when a hard blow struck his left arm, followed by a bolt of fire.
He pushed himself through the sand toward the cliff face. Maggie appeared and helped him to his feet. They crept toward a jumble of rough, gray boulders at the base of the canyon wall, crouching as low as possible.
Maggie had dragged her horse to a juniper near the boulders and tied it. The animal twitched and sweated, trembling with each echoing shot. Greenlaw must have never used the horse for hunting. It was their good luck that the narrow space between the canyon wall and the boulders protected the pair, because bullets continued to fly. The sharp reports echoed off the walls, sounding like more than one shooter.
Blood soaked Cole’s sleeve “You’re hurt. Take your shirt off,” Maggie ordered.
The bullet had grazed his arm, cutting a furrow in the skin and muscle. The wound was clogged with sand and gravel from crawling in the dirt and bits of flannel from his shirt. Maggie folded her bandanna and placed it over the wound, pressing hard. Cole flinched.
“Sorry,” she said. “Elementary first aid. Apply pressure.”
The rain of bullets stopped. “What the hell is happening?” she said. Her voice rang loud in the new silence. “Nobody shoots at archaeologists.”
“Keep your voice down, Maggie. I bet it involves whoever left the tracks we saw on the way up. There’s nobody else around.”
He was feeling lightheaded now that the adrenaline rush had passed. “Mags, you got any water left? Mine’s gone with that asshole horse.” She watched as he sucked down the water. She could have used it to wash Cole’s wound, but they couldn’t know how long they’d be stuck. It was better to save it for themselves.
She checked underneath the folded bandanna. Although the bleeding had stopped, the coppery scent of blood hung in the air. Maggie improvised a bandage with Cole’s clean bandanna and used her pocketknife to cut her shirttail into strips.
“There,” she said, tying the shirt-tail strips around the bandage. “Good as new. Just hope the bleeding won’t start again when we move.”
“Thanks, Mags. I think you have a new career in emergency medicine.”
“Now that’s a thought. Certain to pay better than archaeology but not as much fun.”
“What, you’re having fun now?” Cole grinned.
Maggie grimaced. “Not so much. You can put your shirt back on, cowboy.”
“I think the shooter must be hiding up the canyon. Maybe in the overha
ng we spotted at the confluence.”
“He must have been watching us,” Maggie said, “waiting until we came within firing range.” The shooter was like a hunter, secure and unseen in a blind.
“Can the crazy bastard see where we’re hiding?” Maggie asked. “God help me if my horse gets shot. That old rancher, Greenlaw, would sue my ass,” she grumbled. “Or shoot me.”
“There’s something in the canyon the shooter is protecting,” Cole said. “Something he really doesn’t want us to find.”
“A gold mine? An alien spaceship that crashed?” Her sense of humor was faltering but still functioning.
“My money’s on a cliff ruin.” Maggie’s eyes widened with surprise.
“You’re shitting me.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. No cowboy chasing a lost calf would fire on us. This is a perfect place for a cliff dwelling. Remember the sherds we saw at the canyon intersection?”
“So—he shot at us to scare us away.”
“If he meant to hit me, I suppose I’d be dead.”
They fell silent. It was hot in their hiding spot, the air filled with the scents of crushed vegetation and juniper that overpowered the lingering smell of blood. When time passed without shots, they assumed the shooter had given up, when another bullet pinged off a rock, and then shots splattered in the sand once more.
“He must be able to see us,” Cole said. “I bet he’s trying to flush us out.”
Maggie shuddered. “And then what? Pick us off like ducks in a stupid carnival shooting gallery when we try to leave?”