The Shaman's Secret

by Natasha Narayan

  At that moment the door to the Last-Dance Saloon swung open and a tall man strode out. He wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, and a couple of holsters on his belt each contained a pistol. He strode toward us, his spurs jangling.

  “Who might you be?” he drawled.

  All at once a prattle of voices rose up. “Dobie. Red. Strangers. Got Carlito. What you gonna do, Red?”

  Dobie Red, if that was his name, held up his hand and the voices stopped. A star-shaped badge glinted on his waistcoat, inscribed with the legend SHERIFF.

  Slowly he took a puff on his cigarette, then blew the smoke out toward Waldo.

  “You ain’t answered my question. Coyote got your tongue? I asked you what yer doin’ in my town.”

  “It’s a long story,” Waldo replied. “The short version is that we come in peace. We got a sick man here and we need to find a doctor.”

  Dobie Red—or Red Dobie—glanced at Cyril, slumped behind Waldo on his horse. It took but a second to see that he was desperately ill, his breath rattling out of his chest.

  “Looks pretty bad,” Red agreed.

  “Have you a doctor here?”

  “Yeah. We got a doctor.”

  “Well, we’ve no time to waste. We need to get this man there. Please.”

  Red held up a hand. When he lowered it, we saw a Colt glinting in his grip. “Not so fast. I’m gonna have to arrest you first.”

  The pistol was pointing straight at me.

  I exhaled slowly. Meanwhile Aunt Hilda had started to splutter. I stared at the sheriff, bewildered. Wasn’t that the name for a policeman out in these parts? Why was it that everyone in America seemed to pull a gun on us?

  “What is it I’m supposed to have done?” I asked.

  “No supposin’ about it. I know you’re a lady, but that ain’t ladylike behavior now, is it?”

  “Why are you arresting me? You’ve only just met me.”

  “Got the evidence right here. Take you to Redwood City for trial. If you weren’t a lady, expect you’d get the maximum penalty.”

  “For what? What am I supposed to have done?”

  The menace in the man’s voice made us all fearful. Aunt Hilda urged her horse on. It trotted up so that it stood by my side.

  “For heaven’s sake, man,” she said, in her most imperious voice. “Tell us straight out. Why are you accusing my niece? I’m certain it will all turn out to be a ghastly mistake.”

  Even out here in the wilds of the West I could see that Aunt Hilda’s tone commanded respect. The sheriff gazed up at her, his gun never wavering from my throat.

  “No disrespect, ma’am, but your niece here, she done a bad thing.”

  “Explain yourself, man.”

  “She’s a horse thief.” Red waved his gun at my magnificent stallion, the one the shaman had given me personally, the one called Rolling Thunder. “That li’l beaut she’s riding is my own Carlito.”

  The crowd started to mutter. “That’s right, it’s Carlito … Damn rustlers … Knew it at once, never mistook a horse in my life …”

  Trust me to ride into a mining camp full of toughs on one of their own stolen horses. This would take some explaining. The mob was getting angrier, mutters turning into fingered guns. How long before their words turned to action, to sticks and stones? Red sensed this because he raised his gun and fired a warning shot into the air. It startled my Rolling Thunder. He reared up, but I managed to get him under control.

  “Quieten down,” Red shouted. “Carlito is my horse and I’m gonna do this my way. The civilized law-abiding way. We ain’t having no lynching here.”

  “What’s lynching?” Rachel whispered, as the crowd shuffled at Red’s words. It was too awful to explain to her. Lynching meant a mob acting without rule of law, beating someone they took a dislike to, hanging them from a tree or a post. Hanging them till they were stone dead.

  “We gonna ride this young lady to the jail. We gonna see proper justice even if it means taking her all the way to Tombstone or Yuma. But I’m gonna do this by the law, you hear?” Red drawled—and my heart lightened a bit. “We do it proper—and then you git to see one or two of these here rogues hanged.”

  With the gun in my face and the angry mob surrounding me, I could not think of a single thing to say. Aunt Hilda was made of sterner stuff.

  “Do you know who I am?” she demanded of the sheriff.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I’m Lady Hilda Salter, world-famous explorer and second cousin of Queen Victoria of England. This is the honorable Katherine Salter, daughter of the Duke of Devonshire. She will be a duchess one day.”

  “Don’t make no difference to me. We are freeborn American citizens—we don’t owe your queen nothing.”

  His words were defiant, but I noticed that one or two of the men had started shuffling uneasily.

  “I’ve traveled through the wilds of the Himalayas and the darkest jungles of Africa. I’ve received more courtesy from the Sultan of Borneo—a notoriously bloodthirsty man—than I have from you so-called civilized Americans. Will you hear our story?”

  “Better listen, Red,” a sandy-haired youth called out, and other voices rose in agreement. Red nodded and Aunt Hilda began her tale. Truthfully she told how we left San Francisco and journeyed to Calistoga where we picked up a stagecoach and came out to Arizona. Equally truthfully she related how we had been held up by a lone outlaw, who had stripped us of everything we owned.

  At the description of the trick that had been played on us, the single outlaw who had made us believe he commanded a gang of robbers, many of the miners broke out into guffaws. He was notorious in these parts, apparently, and went by the name of Bandit Bart.

  It was quite a distinction to have been robbed by him—these miners gazed on us with new respect.

  Then Waldo interrupted and took up the story of how we had been kidnapped by Apaches. Aunt Hilda was quite annoyed that he had butted in, but I could see he had some plan. I was tense as I listened, for I didn’t want to betray our Apache friends. In the end they had treated us quite decently. Even though they had clearly stolen Red Dobie’s magnificent horse, well, they had sort of given it back, hadn’t they? I did not want to betray their trust.

  Waldo did not let me down. He didn’t tell the miners how the Apaches had let us go, giving us food, water and horses. Instead he related how we had escaped in the dead of night, stealing their horses and riding through night and day to this place. The Apaches were the thieves, he declared, not us. Cyril Baker was dying because the Indians had beaten him so savagely.

  His story, I could see, had turned the tables.

  But still Red Dobie was suspicious. He turned to me, his eyes blazing. “What about those?” he asked, pointing to the embroidered moccasin boots I wore. “How come you all dressed up like a fancy Indian squaw?”

  My heart fluttered and for a moment I couldn’t speak. “The Apaches stole my boots,” I said. “Seemed only fair that I borrow a pair of theirs.”

  A huge laugh rose from the crowd at my words. Several of those rugged, sunburnt miners were rolling around as if I had said the wittiest thing ever. It was that funny.

  “We’ve been through hell and come out the other side,” Aunt Hilda broke in. “Now will you let us take this man to the doctor?”

  Red signaled with his gun and a couple of young men came over to Waldo, with Mr. Baker lying limp behind him. “Take him to Doc Cotton’s,” he said. “Make sure he gets the best treatment.” He spread his legs wide and grinned up to him. “Say Red Dobie’s gonna foot the bill—after all, these strangers brought my Carlito back home.”

  “Thank you,” Aunt Hilda said. “That’s … well, mighty gracious of you.”

  Red waved his pistol in the air as if to say it was nothing. Then, to my relief, he put it back in his holster. “In return I need your help for something. Can you tell me where those Apaches are hiding out? I’m gonna get a party of men to—”

  “Flush ’em out,” Waldo interrupted.<
br />
  “Yeah. We need to do a little spring cleaning out here.”

  I was seized with anguish; if we were to bring death to the Apaches as the price of saving our skins, I would never forgive myself. I had a sudden vivid flash of the Apache camp. The settlers riding through it on horseback, setting fire to the wickiups, shooting women and children, whoever happened to be around. And if the warriors were there, including my own brave friend Boy, that would be worse.

  A massacre.

  “The Apache camp is over there,” Waldo said, indicating the direction we had come from. “I’ll tell you exactly how to find it.”

  To my horror he gave a detailed description of the camp—and the Indians who lived there—right down to the eagle-shaped stone guarding the entrance. Bile rose from my stomach into my mouth and for an instant I could hardly breathe. The sun shining on his blond hair, his blue eyes glowing, Waldo calmly betrayed every detail. A shimmering veil of anger covered my eyes as I gazed at him and heard the words coming out of his mouth. So he had meant those things he’d said about the Apaches; he thought they were savages who deserved to be enslaved or put to death.

  It didn’t matter how handsome and amusing Waldo was, I could never, ever feel friendship for him again.

  Rachel was as shocked as I was. She looked at him, her eyes widening, the color draining from her face. As we moved toward Doc Cotton’s surgery, a posse of cowboys gathered. They raised a cloud of dust as they galloped over the desert toward the distant mountains.

  A cloud of dust that signaled death to the Apache camp.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Past Bill Sherman’s General Store was a sign swinging on an iron hook saying COTTON’S SURGERY. It was illustrated with a picture of a cowboy with his arms round a grizzly bear. The man I took to be the doc was sitting on the porch, swinging back and forth on a rocking chair while he puffed on a pipe. A grubby child played with a hoop and stick beside him. When he saw a crowd of people rushing toward him, carrying a body on a stretcher, the doc jumped up, knocking his pipe out.

  “Trouble?”

  “No shooting today,” one of the stretcher bearers replied. “This man’s real sick.”

  “Bring him in.”

  The five of us went in with the stretcher bearers—who laid Cyril out on the bare pine table. It was clean enough, but I saw deep scratches on it and ragged dark stains. Perhaps of blood. Cyril was bad; he was spectral, burning up. His eyes were open, but looked at nothing.

  I was frightened for him.

  Doc Cotton ripped open his shirt. A bony lad, apparently his assistant, had appeared. He brought a pail of water, with which the doctor sluiced down Cyril’s chest.

  “He’s mighty hot,” he said. “Got any idea how he catched this fever?”

  Aunt Hilda shrugged. “Not really. He seemed a little poorly in California—just got worse and worse as we came into the desert.”

  “Poor wretch shouldn’t have traveled. What’s the hurry anyway?”

  “He believed he was cursed,” I said.

  Doc Cotton swung his gaze over to me, his pale blue eyes widening. “Cursed?”

  “Something like that,” I said, aware of how foolish I sounded. “He believed he was struck down with an illness that wasn’t of—I don’t know—of human origin … Like a disease of the spirit … that he was haunted, if you—”

  “The child is confused,” Aunt Hilda butted in. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Mr. Baker here caught a fever—that is all.”

  “Sounds like Apache talk,” said Doc Cotton, keeping his eyes trained on me. “Or them Navajo Indians. They talk of ghost sickness. That’s when the dead come back to haunt the living.”

  “Maybe it involves a skinwalker,” I said.

  “That one of them savages who can turn themselves into animals?”

  “I think the idea is that they can walk—literally walk—in other creatures’ skins.”

  “You can’t believe in such nonsense,” Aunt Hilda interrupted, but Doc Cotton just shrugged.

  While we were talking, the gangling assistant had been removing Baker’s shirt and trousers. He was near naked now, his skinny body laid out on the slab as if being prepared for his funeral, so pale it could have been made out of glue, or dried cheese. The brand of the snake was very visible on him—but now it was no longer on his arm. It had appeared instead in the center of his chest, just to the right of his heart.

  “What’s that?” the doctor asked, staring at it.

  “Witchery,” I replied, while Aunt Hilda hurriedly said it was some sort of decoration.

  “Skinwalkers and suchlike,” the doctor said, “I don’t know much about ’em. But I don’t hold with dismissing it out of hand. The desert ain’t like the city.”

  “Men turning into animals?” Waldo asked in a skeptical voice. “Sounds like heathen poppycock.”

  I glared at him when he spoke, then glanced away. At the moment, feeling as I did, I never wanted to see his smug face ever again.

  “Stranger things have happened out here.”

  The doctor began to palpate the chest, placing his hands firmly over Cyril’s body. He grunted something to his assistant who went over to the wall and fetched a pair of large rusty-looking pliers and a pair of tongs. I thought it strange that the doctor didn’t order us out of the surgery while he was working. No other doctor I’ve known would operate on someone with an audience crowding around. Waldo, Isaac and Aunt Hilda were gazing with a sort of ghoulish curiosity as the doctor swabbed down Cyril’s chest, but Rachel was looking rather sick.

  “I think he got some kind of stone or blockage down here,” the doctor said. “Feels hard. Like summin’s wrong. First I’m gonna take some of his blood. After doing some tests I’m gonna make a li’l cut just here”—he pointed to the snake on Cyril’s chest—“and take a closer look inside.”

  It was my friend down there on the table, helpless as a goat about to be skinned. My initial suspicion and dislike of him had vanished. Our illness, too, had made a bond between us. Still, I wondered how well I really knew him. Often his presence felt as slippery as satin. Something that would slide through your fingers, leaving you unsure of what you were dealing with.

  We were in the same boat, Cyril Baker and I. It was just that he was further down the road. I hadn’t wanted to explain to the doctor the origin of our illness. How we were both cursed by drinking an elixir of life, a forbidden water in the Himalayas. How a worm of disease, a grub of illness, had feasted on us ever since. Growing fat on our souls. How could I explain something like that to a simple country doctor?

  It was easier to put it in Apache terms. I turned away from the scene around the operating table and gazed around aimlessly. Mr. Baker was haunted by ghost sickness. Something was not right inside him; he had a diseased soul.

  While I was thinking these thoughts, my eyes were idly swinging over Doc Cotton’s cabinets. The trophy cabinet was stuffed with moose head, deer antler and buffalo skins. The diagram of a horse, with all the major bones and arteries. The skull of a dog, or was it a sheep?

  An awful lot of pictures of animals. He must love animals.

  “Most of your patients aren’t much given to conversation, are they, Doc Cotton?” Isaac said loudly, cutting into my thoughts. I turned round just as the doctor filled a syringe with Baker’s blood.

  “They’re not exactly fine talkers,” he replied.

  I stared at him, strange suspicions forming in my mind.

  “What are you blathering about, Isaac?” Aunt Hilda said, her eyes glued on the syringe. “Stop interrupting. The doctor’s got work to do.”

  “The veterinarian,” Isaac said.

  “What?”

  “Doc Cotton’s main business is animals, not humans. Isn’t that right, Doc?” Isaac said.

  “People can’t afford to be too choosy around here,” the man replied. “There ain’t another medical man within a hundred miles … So I do get more than my fair share of humans.”


  “Gunshot wounds mostly, I’d guess,” Isaac said, looking at the pliers.

  “Nobody better at taking lead from a man’s gut than Doc Cotton,” the skinny assistant piped up loyally.

  “You’re a veterinarian?” I asked, appalled.

  “By training, yep. But jack of all trades out here.”

  Aunt Hilda had flushed deep red. “Sir … you have played the foulest trick on us.”

  Sighing, Doc Cotton put down his vial and his syringe. “Look, lady, you want to, you take this man away. He can ride over to Vegas—or any place else you want. Find someone with a fancy qualification. Doubt he’d last the ride, mind. The man’s dying.”

  At this Mr. Baker gave a hoarse groan. His eyes rolled over the doctor and then onto me, where they stopped. The look he gave me was chilling.

  “Leave me in peace,” he said. “I haven’t got long.”

  “This won’t do, Mr. Baker,” Aunt Hilda said. “We have got to get you to a proper doctor.”

  “There is nothing any doctor can do.”

  “A proper doctor. A surgeon.” She turned to Doc Cotton. “Surely there is a qualified doctor somewhere near here?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe a day’s ride.”

  “We must send for him at once,” Aunt Hilda said.

  But Mr. Baker seemed to have found some reserves of strength.

  “I order you to leave me … GO!”

  “You’re in no fit state to make that decision.”

  “Miss Salter … leave me. I must talk to your niece.”

  “Shush now.”

  “JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” he shouted.

  Mr. Baker had used all his strength to sit up, the veins standing out in his neck. It was awful, the elderly, half-naked man sitting there propped on one trembling arm, his face red with rage.

  “I am going to die now,” he said in a quieter voice, “but first I want to have one last talk with Kit. In private.”

  “GO!” I hissed, anger rising in me. “Respect him, will you?”

  “I think we should do as she says,” said Rachel softly. “It’s Mr. Baker’s wish.”