Eagle Warrior

by Jenna Kernan

  “It’s a cattle tag. The kind that goes in their ear. One of our new heifers has a marker with the same number as my birthday. My dad named her Morgan II.”

  Heifers were young females who had not yet calved. Morgan recalled that this particular girl would be bred for the first time this summer if she put on enough weight.

  Ray squeezed her hand and then drew back, a satisfied smile on his face. “So we look there in the morning.”

  “But how could my father have chased down that heifer. He was weak.”

  “Yearlings go into the chute for vaccinations between four and twelve months. Your dad is always there to help. He could have gotten to her then.”

  “When is that?” she asked.

  “January.”

  “A month before the shooting. He was still getting around then. He didn’t seem ill.” But he had been ill. She frowned at the thought.

  “Timing is right,” said Ray.

  Morgan had another concern. “We don’t have a chute. How are we getting to her? Just wander out in the herd?”

  “I have a better idea. Jack and his brother Carter used to be fair at calf roping. I’ll ask Jack to meet us.”

  Jack Bear Den looked big enough to drop a full-grown cow on her side, and in a year, this heifer should be nearly 800 pounds.

  Ray stood and tucked his stool at the counter. “We best get some rest.”

  She was certain she would get little. Between her father’s death, the distraction of knowing this virile man slept under her roof and the notion of an honest to goodness treasure hunt looming.

  They couldn’t go tonight because she would never leave Lisa alone and she did not wish to endanger her by bringing her out into the night.

  “How will we be sure we are not followed?”

  “Tribal police will help.” He set his empty water glass in the sink and followed her down the hall. She told herself to just say good-night and make a hasty exit, but instead she paused by her door, wondering what he would say if she invited him in. But she wouldn’t ask, not with her daughter there in the next room.

  “Well, thank you, Ray, for everything.”

  “Sure.” He lifted a hand and stroked her cheek, pausing for an instant to cup her jaw. Did he want her, too?

  His hand fell away and he backed into her father’s room. The one her father would never return to again.

  She just managed to get into her room before the tears started again.

  What a mess, she thought and tumbled into her bed alone.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, after dropping Lisa and Cookie off with her uncle Agustin and Ray’s trusted friend Dylan, she and Ray headed to tribal police headquarters. There they found Jack, who had abandoned his blazer and turquoise bolo in favor of jeans and a flannel shirt, boots and a gray cowboy hat with a colorful turquoise and silver hatband. He stood before a red pickup hitched to a trailer containing two horses.

  “Ready to ride?” he asked.

  She and Ray climbed in the truck and they headed out away from the tribe’s cattle.

  “It’s the wrong direction,” she said.

  “Yup,” said Jack. Then he lifted the radio on his hip. “Anything, chief?” he asked.

  “You got company. I got them.”

  Jack turned onto a road that would loop back in the direction they needed to travel. They passed a tribal police car and Jack waved out the window. Then he turned to her.

  “In case we have more company.”

  They rode in silence to the tribal cattle herd. Finding Morgan’s heifer would be like finding a particular rock in a stream. Except her heifer had not yet calved. That should narrow the search.

  The radio at Jack’s hip sounded as tribal police chief Tinnin started talking.

  “Guy Heron. Neighbor of Ms. Hooke’s.”

  “I got one, too,” said another voice.

  “That’s Wetselline. The officer we passed,” said Jack to Ray.

  “Friend of yours, Ray,” said Wetselline. “Name’s Andrew Peck.”

  Ray growled. “How’s he out already?”

  “No priors. Anglo. The judge set bail and he posted.”

  “He broke into her house,” said Ray.

  “And he’ll be tried. Until then he’s out.”

  “I’m going to have to crack open his skull.”

  “Arrest him for trespassing,” said Jack into the radio. “Hold him until I get there.”

  “I’m escorting Heron home,” said Chief Tinnin. “Out.”

  Jack turned to Morgan, wedged between his massive thigh and Ray’s muscular one.

  “You are a very popular woman, Ms. Hooke.”

  And she would be until they found that money. At the grazing area for the castrated males and the unbred female yearlings, Ray and Jack moved like the military unit they’d once been a part of. The horses were unloaded, bridled and mounted. Her job was to help spot Criollo cattle as they drove them by. She’d been given a can of red marking paint and been stationed at the gate between pastures. The plan was to move the cattle through the narrow gate, giving her a chance to see her heifer and use the can to mark her. The men got the herd moving and she ignored the cows with calves and the young males, easily spotted because of their trimmed horns, as she watched for the familiar numbers of any heifers. There were three that had the number twelve on their tags and had a calf. She marked them all. By the time they were done, she was covered with dust but they had three possible heifers. Ray scouted the candidates and found the correct one. Then Morgan sat back and watched in appreciation as Ray easily roped the bovine’s head and Jack got a loop around a back leg. The two of them brought her down to her side, neatly hobbling her front and back hooves. When she was down, they called Morgan over. They all inspected the tag and found nothing unusual.

  “Dead end,” said Jack.

  “No,” said Ray who had squatted and got his face nearly on the ground. “Flip her.”

  The two men rolled the struggling heifer to her opposite side and they all looked at the horn, spotting the marks that had been etched in the smooth pale surface and then made distinct with some kind of ink.

  “My father must have known that I couldn’t locate this alone,” she said.

  “So he wanted you to find help,” said Jack.

  Male help, she knew. Her father’s way of ensuring that she would have a man, possibly of her choosing, to assist her. Her track record in that department left much to be desired, which was why her dad had enlisted Kenshaw’s help. And they had found Ray.

  “What does it say?” asked Jack.

  They all stared at the marks. There was a capital letter B followed by a vertical line and then another capital letter B: B |B

  “What is that supposed to mean?” asked Ray.

  Morgan smiled because she knew exactly where to go next.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “A brand?” asked Ray, hazarding a guess as he looked at the mark etched in the horn of the struggling bovine.

  They were still thinking cattle and in a way they were right.

  “Yes and no,” she said.

  Morgan took Ray aside and told him what the clue meant. The B Bar B was the brand of a ranch here in the 1920s. It had been part of the land swap that had granted them their reservation, allowing them to leave the Salt River Apache Indian Reservation where their people had been forced in the 1870s. In 1910 and again in 1930 they were granted land. But the chimney of one of the more famous rancheros remained on the reservation.

  “I used to camp there with my parents. My dad collected willow and devil’s claw by the stream there.”

  Ray knew that Morgan’s father was a talented basket man weaving bulbous olla baskets, trays and storage containers of white willow with figures o
f animals and men crafted from strips of black made from the pods of devil’s claw. His work had been sought after by collectors and had supported his family until his illness made it impossible for him to collect materials, let alone weave.

  “So this is the mark on a chimney?” Ray asked, clarifying.

  “Yes. Up along the stream. All that is left is the chimney and above the mantel is a letter B and a bar and below that another B. B Bar B.”

  “And he stashed the money there?” asked Ray.

  “I think so.” Morgan looked at the calf, bawling beside its struggling mother. “When could he have possibly done this?”

  Ray motioned to the calf. “Fresh brand and ear tag on that little fellow. Branding is in March. Was Karl here for that?”

  Morgan shook her head. “He was arrested that day in February. So when did he etch that horn?”

  “Does he help out with the tribe’s herd?”

  “Yes. He’s good friends with our livestock manager. Or, I mean, he was.” She felt the weight of her father’s death like a blow.

  “Well the calves are branded and tagged in September. He’d have had a chance then.”

  “So long ago?” She couldn’t believe he had planned a murder and all this way back then.

  “Or in January when they give the yearlings vaccinations.”

  That was more likely. She found herself nodding. “Possibly.”

  She wondered how long ago he repainted Lisa’s statue and when he etched that first clue in his bracelet. Perhaps she’d never know.

  “How far a walk up the canyon is that chimney?”

  “Three or four miles and uphill. It’s past the lower ruins in the box canyon.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “You have to know where to look.”

  Ray helped Jack release the Heifer before returning to her. “We’ll use Jack’s horses. I need to get some gear, food, and extra water.”

  Water was the most important of supplies, as the canyon had only one spring and that was above the remains of the ranch.

  He glanced at the sky. The morning was long gone and the afternoon had now crept toward evening. “Gonna be close.”

  “I’d like to check on Lisa.”

  He nodded and they headed for the trailer, already loaded and ready to roll. They drove away from town, deeper into the reservation backcountry, off-limits to outsiders without a permit. Near the top of one hill they pulled off because this was one place they all knew had cell-phone service.

  She got a hold of Lisa, who had been baking with her aunt, helped take care of the baby goats with Uncle Agustin and Dylan Tehauno had apparently taught her daughter how to throw a Frisbee, of all things.

  “We used to do that in Iraq,” said Ray. “Ask her if he can still catch it behind his back on his index finger.”

  Yes, he could, Lisa reported. Morgan spoke to her uncle, who assured her that Lisa could sleep in the guest bedroom and would be waiting for her in the morning. Then he told Morgan to be careful. She planned to do that.

  They continued on to the drop-off point where Morgan was surprised to see their shaman waiting with camping gear and supplies. Jack gave Ray a radio.

  “You might make it before dark,” said Jack. “But best not to take the horses down after sunset. Dangerous. We’ll leave my truck and trailer here. Radio in to let us know your status, not your location or anything else you don’t want the world to know. If we don’t hear from you every few hours, we’ll send in help.”

  The reminder that they were faced with dangers far beyond rattlesnakes and potential falls sobered Morgan and took away the joy she had felt at the prospect of riding out alone with Ray.

  Morgan checked the girth of her borrowed mare and found it tight. She needed no help to mount. Behind her in the saddlebags were their food, water and cooking kit. A tightly rolled wool blanket had been tied behind the saddle’s cantle. She would be sleeping under it and the stars right next to Ray Strong. Now that was a thought that stirred her up more than strong coffee mixed with whiskey.

  A campfire, starlight and a long, cool April night. She glanced at Ray who met her speculative gaze with one of his own.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “You bet.”

  * * *

  HAD RAY BEEN imagining the desire blazing in Morgan’s deep brown eyes? He sure hoped so, but his mind would not let him rest and his body made it difficult to sit in his saddle. He took point and glanced back often, mostly just to enjoy the sight of her, hips swaying with the rocking movement of the saddle and the sunlight caressing her flushed skin. Had he really ever thought she looked like a lost child?

  She seemed all woman now, with her chin up and her mouth curved in a knowing smile.

  “Almost there,” she promised.

  They rode along the gradual incline of the wide stream past the towering oak trees that shaded their way. This was good grazing land with plenty of water. He spotted the remains of the fence posts still visible and still clinging to the rusting coils of barbed wire. He might have missed the place that had once been a wide road, had Morgan not brought it to his attention. He had been to the ruins, farther up the canyon, but somehow he had never seen the chimney she mentioned. When they reached it, he understood why. Wild grapes nearly engulfed the standing masonry. Just the top eight feet of the chimney showed—exposed red brick of what had once protruded from the roof of a ranch house. The hearth itself was wide and open.

  They dismounted and Ray used Jack’s radio to call in, reporting on the weather. Morgan tied their horses, drank some water and then offered the canteen to Ray. He accepted the vessel and lifted his head to drink. She was mesmerized by the rhythmic up-and-down movement of his Adam’s apple and the way he used the back of his forearm to wipe away the moisture that clung to his mouth. By the time he stowed the canteen, Morgan’s skin tingled all over and there was a steady, insistent throbbing low and deep.

  She gave herself a mental shake and left him to search the chimney. It had been years since she had made this trip, before Lisa was born, she realized. Back when she was no more than a girl herself and life seemed richer and more full of promise.

  Morgan tugged back the hearty vines to reveal the marks as Ray made his way to her. In the redbrick column, the maker had added a gray-stone B. Beneath was a four-inch piece of similar stone and below that another capital letter B.

  “Never saw this before,” he said.

  They looked in the chimney and felt around but found nothing that could be a secreted box of money. Finally, sweating and with bits of grapevine clinging to their hair, they stepped back.

  Morgan spotted it first and gave a little cry of surprise.

  “There!” she pointed at the side of the chimney. The stones inside the hearth had been blackened from many fires. But someone had used a stone to pound away a design in the same manner by which the petroglyphs had been created on the face of the dark basalt stone cliffs by ancient people.

  Ray examined the images. They were just the right height for someone sitting in the hearth and the rounded stone used to make the pattern still lay in the hearth.

  “They look recent,” said Ray.

  Morgan lifted the stone tool and gave a gasp. “My father’s mark.”

  She held the stone and he saw the capital K and the shape of a fishing hook. Karl Hooke. Ray recognized the insignia that her father had included on the rim of all his baskets using a banded pattern of black devil’s claw and white willow. And there was the same mark scratched on the side of the pestle Karl had used.

  “He made this,” she said, her fingers reverently stroking the mark. Then she turned her attention to the petroglyph her father had knocked into the wall of the hearthstone in a series of taps so that the pattern seemed to be created with a machinist’s ball-peen hammer
instead of a stone. Ray studied the engraving, thinking it looked like many he had seen in various places on the reservation and elsewhere in the southwest. The symbols showed two turtles and a crane. Morgan nodded and a smile played across her mouth.

  “I know these marks.”

  “It’s a location?” he asked.

  “The upper ruins. It’s on a stone in the cliff dwelling.”

  On the ride in, they had passed the lower ruins, which were a series of stone mounds and the walls that once formed the lower rooms of red stone and oak-framed communal homes. This was all that remained of a pueblo people who came before them. Ray knew the place, of course.

  Then there were the upper ruins left by the ancient ones who had lived here a thousand years before the Apache and left for reasons of their own. Their home had been built of stone that had been carefully laid into the natural cave. The water came from the spring at the foot of the cliff, which was hauled up the cliff face in clay pots tied with cordage made from willow. There were pots still up there, untouched by their people and yet undiscovered by pot hunters, the looters who saw only money when they looked at the possessions of the ancient ones. Perhaps her father had left her the money in one of those pots. Ray hoped so, because his next call confirmed that the treasure hunters were becoming bolder.

  They checked in again and Jack told him that the patrol had turned away two more vehicles. One of the shops in Darabee was selling maps with the location of Morgan’s home and the museum where some of her father’s baskets had been available were now sold out. Jack reported that the one large olla basket in the tribe’s museum, also made by her father, had been stolen and recovered. Ray stowed the radio and they prepared the horses to resume their journey.

  The upper ruins resided high in a natural cave in the rock face. Reaching it took climbing skills and a complete absence of the fear of heights. He gave Morgan a speculative look.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’ve been up there?”

  “Of course. Many times.”

  “Into the kivas?” he asked, referring to the circular chambers built high up on the cliff face into the natural cave by the ancients for religious ceremonies.