by Win Blevins
“Those were found in the ruin,” Zahnie said. “Normally we ask people to leave them where they lay, but these had already been moved.”
He turned the ancient pot pieces over on his palm, traced their designs with his finger. He especially fingered a big piece with a smooth rim and a handsome geometrical design.
“Black on red, the Moonlight Water style.” She looked on the ground next to the rock. “Oh hell!”
Zahnie held out a plastic barrette decorated with pink and blue flowers, baby colors. “This belongs to Wandafene.”
Red chuckled. “A brand-new relic to add to the old.” He stepped to the far side of the sagebrush and gingerly lifted a small bra up by one strap half-buried in the sand. “Seems the shade looked good to them, too.”
Zahnie’s expression said she wanted to do anything but think about her niece’s underwear. She snatched the bra and shoved it in her jeans pocket. “We try to keep telling them ‘graduation before pregnancy.’ I’m going to look around. You stay here.”
Good. Red wanted to be alone in this place. He could feel the low drum of the ancient earth.
Red held the glasses on the ruin. Everything was different here, wavy-lighted, as if he might catch something out of the corner of his eye, something from another dimension. Grandpa had believed in other worlds and said pookahs opened the doors between them. Didn’t seem a likely place for a Celtic pookah, but Red was beginning to realize that the more he knew the less he understood. Another prism of freedom revealed itself to him.
He remembered dioramas from a museum in Los Angeles. Women using handheld rocks to grind wild seeds. Men shaping arrowheads. Children playing with rattles made of dewclaws. Women making sandals from strands of yucca, others building a wall from stone and mud. One man pecking at the cliff with an antler, drawing a deer. Meat drying on a rack.
Those people might be around the next corner. He tossed thoughts away, spun reason out into space, and ate the ruin with his eyes. The people became a swing of pictures, like music, people dancing life here, dancing eternally.
Red smiled, and again he sucked air so deep inside his lungs, it was like drinking it, like having a transfusion of it. He let all words go and tasted the briney lick of time.
* * *
“I didn’t find anything else,” she said.
Red snapped out of it. Was I asleep?
“The people who lived here are fascinating.” Again, her voice had the ring of a tour guide’s. Red looked at Zahnie, thought of asking her not to tell him about them. He wanted to keep his own impressions, which felt misty and too big for words.
She plunged in. “This region has been inhabited for at least two thousand years, starting with Anasazi. Ancestral Puebloans, to be PC.”
Her words hung like strands in front of Red, but he paid them no attention. Colored motes in his eyes, they were pretty, but they made it harder to see. He kept staring at the ruin, like opening a hungry maw. Half-willingly, he began to come back to the ordinary world.
She said, “There are ruins all over this country.”
“Like this? Incredible.”
“Some much bigger, more complex. Most smaller. Maybe most of them still under the ground. The thought of how many are undiscovered is mind-boggling.”
“Way too much to get my head around.”
“Red, I see this place speaks to you. That’s really good. Spend some time here alone.” She chuckled. “You might even get over yourself.”
Hey, lady, I left myself floating with the great white sharks. But Red couldn’t help grinning. She was more right than she knew. He still had plenty of his old self to shed.
“Find a place that calls you and just hang out there. The way I see it, the Ancient Ones welcome us.”
He felt close to her. He wanted to say thank you for the gift of this place (or something like that but not quite so sappy), maybe tell her about the advice from Winsonfred.
“It’s ruins like this where looters come and steal things.”
He snapped his head toward her, and his words came out with a bite. “You don’t mean here?”
“No, not such public spots. The looters do their dirty work in out-of-the-way places.” She let that sit a moment. “I would like to flay them and nail their hides on the barn to dry.”
She cocked her head.
“You hear something?”
“Slam. Car door.”
“Me too.” She clicked her head in several directions, holding still at each, like a bird. She grinned. “Want to do a little cop work?”
Red had no idea what she had in mind. “Why not?”
13
TONTO TO THE RESCUE
Don’t open your mouth when you see a snake. It will jump in.
—Navajo saying
Ed watched the slate-colored Suburban proceed in a stately manner down the wash, almost to the river. He turned the other way on the thermal so he could keep an eye on it. His buzzard brain was pulsing, Trouble, trouble, trouble, in the form of the Emperor and Empress.
He knew these two. Even the way the Emperor steered his car down the faint track annoyed Ed—only the Emperor could bump down a dirt track pretending to be a road and make it look like an imperial procession. Bleck.
The Suburban stopped at a washout, and the Emperor and Empress exited. Ed felt a nasty spasm in his gut. The rotund man and skinny woman started unloading. Ed’s buzzard brain didn’t need to know their names to be angry. Ed noticed that everywhere the Emperor and Empress traveled in the wilds the trees, the grass and cactuses, even the animals seemed more dried up after they left. It was like they sucked the vitality out of everyone and everything around them. The Navajos would say they were stealing a creature’s life force. Hosteen Manygoats said you couldn’t catch a coyote, for instance, unless you got the tip of his nose and the tip of his tail, both, because that’s where he hid his life force. And hiding your life force is a smart thing to do.
One of Ed’s duties was to clean up dead things. He circled for one more look. The Emperor and Empress were shouldering their backpacks and picking up their gear. Unfortunately, they looked perfectly healthy. Okay, today probably wasn’t the day, but Ed could wait them out. Cleaning up the carcasses of the Emperor and Empress—Ed’s tongue told him how savory that would be. He yearned for the day.
* * *
“I have no idea what we’re dealing with,” whispered Zahnie, “but this close to the river, it can’t be much, at the worst petty vandals.”
They kept to the soft sand of the wash and trod in silence. Five minutes, nothing. They crossed a broken-down barbed-wire fence. Ten minutes, Red could see motion. He put his hand on Zahnie’s shoulder. She stopped, nodded, and used the binocs. Finally, she said, “The Nielsens again.” Without explanation she strode quickly toward the two figures.
The woman squeaked out a noise when she saw Red and Zahnie. The man dropped his tools and looked ready for who knew what.
Zahnie advanced, and Red followed warily. The bad guys were an obese, sixtyish fellow and a woman with a fierce and wrinkle-ravaged face. He would be cast as a rotund Lex Luthor and she as Lady Macbeth on a bad day. They wore huge gold wedding rings, and it was painful to imagine them in bed together. They carried shovels and other heavy-looking tools.
“Hello, Dr. Nielsen, Mrs. Nielsen.”
“Zahnie, you know you may call me James.”
“That’s more intimacy than I want,” Zahnie said.
“Good morning, Ms. Kee,” said the woman. “My, but law enforcement is everywhere these days.”
“This is my friend Red Stuart.”
The doctor’s hand was tiny for a man his size, and cold.
“Dr. and Mrs. Nielsen are pot hunters,” Zahnie said.
“Actually, I’m just a chiropractor,” said the doctor.
Zahnie went on. “They loot ruins like this one. They especially love to get into the kivas.” She inclined her head toward the buildings in front of them.
“What’s a kiva
?” said Red.
“A chamber sunk into the earth,” said Nielsen. “Tall, narrow, and circular. Like a water glass.”
“Where they performed their sacred ceremonies,” said Zahnie, “and left some of their best relics. Which is why the doctor and his wife would love to dig illegally there.”
Red could see the remnants of the kiva, two rooms to one side of it, and what looked like a storeroom on the left.
“Zahnie, you know it’s legal. We restrict our collecting to private land where we have the owner’s permission.”
“Unless you dig in grave sites.” She said aside to Red, “NAGPA—that’s the Native American Graves Protection Act. Which the Nielsens probably intended to do right here.”
“Ms. Kee,” said Mrs. Nielsen, “we stick to the law. We keep in mind James’s license to practice, and our relationship with our God.”
“Your God has probably seen you on public land, but I haven’t. Yet.” She turned to Red. “They steal pots and other artifacts from the ruins. Then they show them off in their fancy collection or sell them for bundles of bucks.”
“We use them to beautify our house,” Mrs. Nielsen said.
“Their mansion,” Zahnie said, “and chiropractors don’t make that much. Especially around here.”
“When we’re gone,” said Dr. Nielsen, “our collection will go to the local museum.”
“And what do you plan to do here today?”
“Do you know we’re on Kravin land here?”
“Probably are.”
“I will show you by GPS.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“You may watch us work if you want.”
“I intend to, just to make sure you don’t dig in the midden.” She glanced at Red.
“Mr. Stuart, would you like to see how collecting is done?”
“Sure.”
“Excavating for artifacts is a fascinating hobby.” The doctor did all the talking, his wife all the glowering.
“Will you come into the ruin, Zahnie, or are you traditional?”
“I’m not worried about chindi,” she said, and came close. Later Red found out chindi were spirits to avoid, the residue of disharmony and evil left behind by the dead. “My job is protecting ruins, and especially grave sites.” Zahnie’s expression could have nailed boards to a fence post.
“What do you think?” Dr. Nielsen asked his wife.
“Front wall of that room,” she said, pointing to the largest one.
Red pulled Zahnie aside. “What’s the story here?”
Zahnie stepped to an area directly in front of the ruin. “This,” she said, “on the south side, is probably the trash midden. That’s where the goodies usually are, and where they’d dig if we weren’t here. The Anasazi buried their trash and their dead in the middens, and nice belongings were interred with the dead. It’s illegal. NAGPA says one bone and you’re out.”
“Zahnie,” said the doctor with his amused smile, “your tongue spoils your beautiful face.”
“The men in my life, past and present, would agree with you.”
Mrs. Nielsen snorted.
Red hid his grin.
Dr. Nielsen ducked through the low portal into the room and stomped his feet. The rest of them peered over the half-wall. The corner where roof and walls once met was missing. “This is going to be hard work.” He peered out at Red. “Mr. Stuart, you look fit. Feel up to digging?”
“Not unless you want to walk home,” said Zahnie to Red. “Without any water and weighted down by the curses of the ranger.”
“Look here.” The doctor rose to hand Red a miniature corncob. In coming up, he cracked his head.
“You’re going to knock Wayne Kravin’s ruin down with that hard skull of yours,” Zahnie said.
Dr. Nielsen rubbed the spot, regarded a little blood on his hand, and spoke softly. “The Puebloans farmed for most of their food. Cobs like this are emblems.”
“Don’t pretend you respect these people and what they’ve left. Not in front of me.”
“Listen up,” said Red.
Zahnie looked at him sharply. She’d been talking, but now she heard it, they all heard it, the throb of an engine.
“Who’s coming?” said Zahnie.
“Probably Wayne Kravin,” said the doctor. “He said he’d come by.”
Zahnie made a disgusted face.
An ATV came into sight, driven by a man shaped narrow and hard, like a tree trunk. Garishly painted purple and white, it passed the Suburban, jumped the low bank into the gully that had blocked the Nielsen vehicle, and putt-putted on to the bottom of the slope. The wiry man moved up toward them fast. It was an uneven slope, with dirt and rock jutting out, but he bounced up with a mountain goat’s agility. Strong, thought Red. They all moved out of the ruin to meet him.
“What are you doing here?” he said, glaring at Zahnie.
“Checking out a potential violation of the law,” she answered calmly.
“It’s all right, Wayne,” from the chiropractor.
Wayne gave Dr. Nielsen a look that could have set his hair on fire. If Red had seen Wayne drunk in a bar, he would have grabbed a cue stick as a weapon, knowing trouble was brewing.
“Get off my property,” growled Kravin, his furious eyes aimed squarely at Zahnie.
Everyone froze. Mrs. Nielsen was eyeballing Kravin with an avid expression, like lust, or thirst for blood or money, or all of that mixed up. Her husband didn’t seem to notice. Red reached down behind and got the handle of Nielsen’s spade.
“Get off my property,” repeated Kravin, “you and your boyfriend.”
“Wayne, NAGPA has holds on private property just like public. Native American Graves Pro—”
“I know your talk and your laws and they don’t mean squat to me. I want you moving out before I count to three. One!”
Red flicked his eyes briefly at Zahnie. Looked like she intended to stay.
“Two!” Kravin moved a few steps in Zahnie’s direction.
Red watched Kravin. Timing, timing. The man was a half-dozen steps downhill, well out of reach of Zahnie. Red stood two steps up and sideways from Kravin, and was half again as big.
Kravin reached for his hip, raised a .45 toward Zahnie.
Red took one step, swung the blade, and whacked the gun hand. The .45 flew half a dozen feet.
Kravin collapsed to one knee, holding his hand.
Red bulled into him full force.
Kravin fell backward on a yucca, which stabbed him in tender flesh somewhere near the crotch of his jeans. He howled and rolled onto his back.
Red slugged the big man in the solar plexus. Whumpf! exploded from his throat. Kravin gasped desperately for air.
“Help him!” cried Mrs. Nielsen. “He’s dying.”
“I hit him in the diaphragm,” Red said calmly. “He’ll start breathing in less than a minute.”
Red grabbed the .45, flipped Kravin over, and sat on his butt. Then Red waited for the breathing to start. The moment it did, Red stuck the barrel of the .45 against the bastard’s temple. He worked the action, so the man would know a shell was in the chamber. “Kravin, you feel that muzzle?”
Kravin nodded.
“I’m going to stand up and back away. If you try to get up, I’ll shoot. What do you think, Officer Kee?”
“That would be murder!” cried Mrs. Nielsen.
“Self-defense,” corrected Zahnie. “He tried to assault an officer of the law with a deadly weapon.” She paused. “And reporting crimes is what the satellite phone is for.” She reached for her belt, pulled out the phone, and started punching buttons.
“You going to be still?” said Red to Kravin.
Kravin nodded.
“Reach in your pocket and give me the keys to that ATV.”
Hesitation.
“Now.”
Kravin fumbled around and dropped a key ring onto the sand. Red picked it up, slid backward off Kravin, and carefully, not letting the barrel waver, stood up.
“Yazzie?” said Zahnie. “Yazzie?”
Impatiently, she punched more buttons. “Dispatch? Dispatch? Dispatch?”
She put the satellite phone back on her belt. “No angle on the satellite, the canyon’s too narrow,” she said to Red. She got out her GPS, tried it, and gave Red a strange look. A pale look.
“That’s all right,” Red said. “Mr. Kravin’s not going to make any trouble. Are you?”
Kravin tried to manage an evil eye, prone, with his head pointed down the slope. “When I get loose, I’m going to cut off your balls and feed them to my dogs.”
“You have quite an imagination, Mr. Kravin.”
Red backed up, pistol still on its target, until he stood beside Zahnie and the Nielsens.
Zahnie said, “Mrs. Nielsen, give me your purse.”
With baboon fury on her face, the woman did.
“Dr. Nielsen, give me your truck keys.”
The doctor did.
“Any other keys, the three of you, on you or in your vehicles?”
Silence.
“I’ll take that for a no.”
Red put in, “If it turns out that you’re able to drive away, I will become your personal nemesis.” He glared at each of them, one at a time.
Zahnie said, “Mr. Stuart and I are going to walk back to the river and to satellite reception. Then I will call my superior. They’ll send a helicopter to pick up you perps.”
“We didn’t do anything!” shouted Mrs. Nielsen. She pointed at Kravin. “It was all him.”
“Your testimony may affirm that,” said Zahnie. “In the meantime, sit nicely and wait for the helicopters to arrive. You’ll probably post bail tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” protested Mrs. Nielsen.
“Enjoy the ruin!” Red said.
14
CELEBRATING
Don’t shake hands with a stranger. He might witch you.
—Navajo saying
“You were fantastic!” said Zahnie. They were out of earshot, a hundred yards down the wash, odd-footing their way along.
“Got to be some good come from a life spent in beer joints,” Red answered. “What’s with Kravin anyway?”