A Man Without a Wife

by Beverly Bird

  “Blew the sucker up. If they were anywhere in that car, they’re gone now, but they sure as hell weren’t in the glove compartment.”

  Ricky’s jaw dropped. The guy who had kidnapped him began nodding.

  “We’ll give it a couple more days, just to be sure. If the election comes and goes without a hitch, then we’ll get rid of him and no harm will be done.”

  “What about the father?”

  “If he saw them, then he’ll blow the whistle before the election,” the man said with the kind of patience Ricky’s teacher always used. “If he doesn’t blow the whistle, then he doesn’t know anything.”

  “If he does, we’ve got a whole new set of problems,” one man complained.

  “I don’t pay you to think up problems.” The Navajo man turned back toward the food on the table. Ricky skittered back that way quickly. Then he couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.

  “You blew up my dad’s car?” he blurted. “So now you know the pictures are gone. What was in them, anyway?” Suddenly they were all staring at him hard. Ricky fought the urge to squirm. “Well?”

  “Didn’t you look at them?” the Indian guy demanded.

  “How could I? They were like straight out of the camera.”

  One of the white guys snorted in disgust. “No wonder we didn’t find them,” he said. “She didn’t develop them yet. I was looking for pictures, Cal. Hell, for all I know the film was right where he said it was. Honest to God, I didn’t have time to notice. There were cars in and out of those pumps and people everywhere.”

  “Well,” the witch guy said slowly, “I’d say they’re probably gone now. I doubt the father knows about them. If we get rid of this pest,” he glared at Ricky, “we’ll be fine.”

  The second guy looked kind of funny. “Hey, I never said I’d kill anybody. Man, he’s just a kid.”

  “I didn’t pay you to kill anybody either, now did I?” the man witch snapped. “Don’t worry about it. I hired your brawn, not your limited brains, and this has to be done right.”

  He looked at Ricky. Ricky felt his heart plunge fast and hard, but then the man witch looked away again. He nodded at a little regular door off to the side of the garage door and the three of them started walking that way.

  Ricky figured that out in a hurry. They were going outside to talk about how to kill him. Oh, geez. He ran for the matches as soon as they were gone, his heart pounding hard. Then he raced to the back of the warehouse again.

  He heard the men come back inside just as he lit the first cardboard box. When the flame started going good, he blew on it the way John Detective had done once in The Inferno. It flared just exactly like it had in the comic book story and he was impressed. Then he heard the men shouting about where he had gone to.

  “I’m going to the bathroom again!” he called out. “I told you! I got dysentery!”

  “What the hell is it with this dysentery?” he heard the Navajo man mutter.

  Ricky got the second box lit and pushed it hard, back in the direction he had come from. Then he ran toward the side of the warehouse and up along that wall. There were still more boxes there and he darted along behind them, toward the front again. He heard them shouting curse words, then there was a big, booming sound. For a minute he almost fell down, he was so surprised. He peeked over the top of the boxes. The first one he’d lit had exploded!

  He figured that there was probably paint or turpentine in them—there sure were enough empty cans laying around and they had to come from somewhere. He wanted to watch and see if it would happen to the other box he’d lit, but there wasn’t time. Fire was licking up the wall and one of the white guys was trying to put it out, but the other two were coming his way fast. He turned and ran again.

  Boom! Boom!

  Ricky whooped aloud, heading for the little side door.

  He hit it hard with his full weight and he fell, but he scrambled right back up again. There was a huge wooden wheel beside the door and he pushed at it with all his might. It slid a little, just enough to keep the door from opening all the way again, at least enough for a whole big man to get through. The car they had come in was still parked on the dirt road. Now there was another one behind it, but Ricky didn’t go that way. He figured that was where they would look for him. He headed out into the desert instead, just as he heard the door banging against the wheel, then the garage door went up.

  He pumped his legs as fast as he could and looked up at the darkening sky. A warrior’s moon! Well, not really, because it wasn’t half like that other one had been. It was almost full, but it was still pink orange with a great big ring around it so warriors could see where they were going but nobody could see them, he remembered.

  There was more shouting from behind him, then he heard footsteps coming his way. They started to sound pretty close, but then he couldn’t hear them any more. Suddenly he figured out what must have happened. All those cigarettes must have that man witch puffing, he thought, the way that baseball player always did, the guy the newspapers were always getting on because he smoked. He wanted to whoop out loud again, but he didn’t have much breath left himself. He slowed down a little to take a good look around.

  He saw a real dark area a little way ahead and he hurried toward it. It was another arroyo. He reached it and slid down. They’d keep looking for him—he was pretty sure of that. But there was a warrior’s moon, and he was kind of like a warrior himself now except that he didn’t have a bow and arrow and he really could have used one.

  He saw a gnarled kind of tree just about as tall as he was and he climbed right into it, scrunching down inside. It took a long time for his breath to get steady again and by the time it did, the Navajo man was just reaching the bottom of the arroyo.

  Ricky held his breath, then he grinned. Some warrior this guy was—and he was an Indian, too. He didn’t even think about the funny pink moonlight hiding things right underneath his nose.

  As Ricky watched, Calvin Ozzie huffed and puffed his way past his hiding place and kept on going.

  Chapter 17

  The moon was starting to lose its pinkish cast. Dallas was profoundly grateful.

  When it glowed strangely like that, he found himself thinking about the previous time it had happened, when life had been so much sweeter than he had realized at the time; when Ricky’s infectious grin had lit the night as beautifully as the moon and Ellen had been a warm, pervasive presence beside him. And he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known who she was or how damned sordid and strange their relationship was.

  Ignorance was bliss, he thought bitterly, and he actually found himself wondering if he would have preferred that she had never told him.

  He started pacing again, back and forth along a ridge of high ground. This Blessing Way was even more crowded and busy than the Kinaalda had been, but the people were subdued now, whispering, looking their way furtively. Word of Ellen’s trouble had spread through them like a prairie fire, Dallas thought, then he caught himself.

  Not Ellen’s trouble. His trouble. When they got Ricky back, once they got out of this mess, she would be gone. If nothing else, they seemed to agree on that much.

  “Is that unusual?” he heard himself ask, looking up at the sky again in spite of himself.

  Ellen came up beside him. “What?”

  “Two moons like that in, what, a week?” He thought he felt her shiver. He wouldn’t look at her to be sure.

  “Yes,” she said in that husky, quiet voice. “I guess scientifically speaking, it’s plausible. The days are getting hotter but the summer winds haven’t really come to blow up the dust yet. If it’s going to happen frequently, I suppose this is the season for it. But I’ve never noticed two coming so close together before.”

  She watched Dallas shrug, then he started moving again. “Do you have any idea how much money Ozzie has at stake here?”

  Enough to murder for, even a child. “I know,” she said hollowly.

  “Millions,” he bit out. “Easily. What’s
taking them so damned long?”

  Both Uncle Ernie and Jericho were convening in a medicine lodge not far behind them. “Sometimes it’s hard for Ernie to tremble,” she answered carefully. “It depends on the mood of the Holy Ones, whether they want to talk to him or not.”

  “You’d think between the two of them, they could speed things up.”

  “I told you, Jericho can’t tremble yet. He’s just assisting.”

  Dallas snorted. She made it sound like some kind of supernatural surgery, he thought narrowly. Then there was a slapping sound behind him.

  He jerked around to look at the hut again. A hide flap covered the door and the man called Jericho came out to meet them.

  He wasn’t a bad-looking guy if a woman went for that intense, brooding Native American sort, he thought. Somewhere along the line his nose had been broken, giving him a looked of earned character. Ellen wrapped her hands around his forearm and held on tightly. Something in the area of Dallas’s heart shifted and grated.

  “What happened?” she begged. “Tell me.”

  Dallas moved to join them. “Where’s Ernie?” he demanded. If he had learned anything over thirty-four years, it was to go straight to the top. Besides, he just couldn’t bring himself to trust or like this guy.

  Jericho’s eyes flicked to him. “Asleep,” he said shortly. He tried to decide if he liked this man or not. His hozro was atrocious, but he figured that his son’s plight could have a great deal to do with that. His son’s plight...and the looks he kept shooting Ellen.

  Here we go again, Jericho thought. It had been a year of preposterous happenings, of mobsters and pot thieves, of love being found in the oddest of places on a reservation as old as time. Nothing surprised him any more, not even his strong suspicion that this guy’s kid was the one Ellen had given up for adoption. Ellen hadn’t said as much, but the frantic, wild look on her face told a tale.

  “Asleep?” Dallas repeated, interrupting his thoughts.

  “That’s right. Trembling drains him. I’ll move him out of there in a few minutes, but you two have to get going.”

  “Where?” Ellen pleaded. “Where’s Ricky?” Jericho’s hesitation made something scream in frustration inside her.

  “Our grandfather says the boy is in a small canyon somewhere. He says the sky’s orange. Something’s burning, something big, not just a hogan or a trailer. Yet the area’s remote.” He hesitated again. “The wolfman is with him,” he finished reluctantly. “He’s close by but he hasn’t found him yet. The child is hiding. Soon, very soon, Ozzie is going to change. My guess is he’ll go into a coyote or wolf, something with a strong sense of smell so that he can scent him out.”

  Dallas saw Ellen blanch. “Oh, come off it,” he snapped.

  Jericho looked at him. His expression became flat, unreadable. “You can believe or you can lose him.” Then his face softened as he glanced at Ellen. Dallas felt a very strong irritation itch at his nerve endings.

  “Why don’t you ask Mac for help?” Jericho suggested. “Ernie doesn’t know where the canyon is and I’ve never seen anything like it around here. But if it’s got ruins anywhere in it or nearby, then Mac might know where it is. I’ve got to stay here with our grandfather. He’ll need me.”

  “I...yes. Okay.”

  Ellen started running back toward the stolen car that no one had tried to come after yet. Dallas watched her go a moment, then he moved after her.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Jericho said suddenly. “She’s had enough of that already.”

  Dallas looked back at him, his hackles coming up, every male instinct he possessed bristling inside him. “I should warn you I wouldn’t mind a good fight right about now,” he answered quietly.

  Jericho only shrugged, although his gaze never left his. “There’s no time for that and you know it.”

  Dallas narrowed his eyes against the intrusion of the other man’s gaze. “And what of the way she’s hurt me?”

  “I don’t know how she did. She didn’t tell me. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t deliberate and I’m probably right. She just doesn’t think sometimes.” He hesitated. “There’s a way out,” he finished enigmatically. “There always is. I’ve seen that, too.”

  Dallas wasn’t entirely sure he knew what the shaman was talking about—but he was relatively convinced that Jericho did. “Is there?” he asked. “I’m really not sure any more.”

  Jericho shrugged and started back for the medicine lodge. Dallas finally shook himself and went after Ellen.

  * * *

  He’d expected they’d have to drive again for several more frustrating, heartbreaking hours, but Ellen directed him onto a side road almost immediately.

  “Here, turn here,” she said breathlessly.

  The road was short, barely a quarter of a mile long. Two trailers sat at the end of it on an expanse of cleared desert. One of the trailers was dark, but the other one was ablaze with lights and he heard a generator humming busily.

  Ellen got out almost before he stopped the car and raced toward the trailer that was lit. Dallas followed more slowly, feeling overwhelmed, badly needing something real, something from his own world to latch onto right now. He got it. A woman came outside onto the small porch at the sound of their doors slamming and she was Anglo.

  Somehow he guessed that this was Saint Catherine.

  “Word travels fast,” she murmured. “How’d you find out?”

  Ellen’s footsteps hesitated. “About what? I need to see Mac. What are you doing here at this hour?”

  “Delivering babies.”

  Ellen’s jaw dropped. “How many? Is Shadow all right? Are they all right? Girls? Boys?”

  “Two girls and a boy. They’re small, all around four pounds, but they’re only two weeks early and that’s amazingly good. They’re healthy, strong for their size. I’d still like to get them down to University Hospital for a few days, just as a precaution, but other than that they’re great.”

  Ellen’s head swam. “Triplets. I guess that’s what she gets for camping in that fertility canyon.” Ernie had been right again, she thought, then her gladness shattered. If he was right this time, then Ricky had precious little time left.

  “I’ve got to talk to Mac,” she repeated.

  Dallas felt friction rise suddenly between them as if it were a live thing, scratching and irritating. Catherine’s face hardened and she moved back into the trailer door like some sort of watchdog.

  “This is hardly a good time, Ellen.”

  “It’s an emergency!” Ellen snapped, then her face crumbled. “It’s...oh, God, it’s my son, damn it, and he’s going to die unless I get help!”

  Catherine looked stunned. Her gaze moved dumbly to Dallas, then back again. “Your son?”

  Another man, an Anglo man, finally came out on the porch behind her, pushing her forward a little bit to make room for himself. He was a rugged-looking weathered man and he wore a short ponytail. Dallas inspected him silently, then he relaxed. For some reason, he instinctively liked this guy as much as he had disliked Jericho. He had the sense that he had walked a long, lonely road, grappled with something at the end of it, then had come back to the warmth.

  He also didn’t appear to have any strong ties to Ellen. His greeting to her was bland.

  “What’s going on?” the man asked, then added as an afterthought, “Hi, Ellen.”

  “Your son?” Catherine said again.

  “I thought we were going to the hospital. You said the babies needed observation.”

  “You’d better talk to her,” Catherine said dazedly.

  Mac finally looked closer at Ellen’s chalky face. Some instinct had him walking down the steps, away from his wife and his children, toward her, though he couldn’t have imagined that anything could have taken him away from the trailer right then.

  “What is it?” he asked when he reached them.

  “I need you to help us find someplace.”

  “Someplace?”

  She fill
ed him in hurriedly on the necessary details, what had happened to Ricky and what Uncle Ernie had said. Mac listened, feeling as overwhelmed as the city-looking guy standing behind her appeared to be.

  “Let me go talk to Shadow,” he said finally.

  “Please,” Ellen begged, “hurry.”

  He went back into the trailer. Shadow was sitting up in bed, looking for all the world as if she was going to climb right out whether Catherine liked it or not. Catherine was almost forcibly restraining her.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded. “Does she need me? Something’s been going on with her, Mac. Cat said she poured alcohol all over the clinic floor.”

  “She has a kid?” Catherine repeated disbelievingly. She looked at Shadow accusingly. “Did you know this? Of course you knew. What are you going to do?” she asked Mac.

  Mac sat on the bed, pushing his wife back down himself. “You’re not going anywhere except to the hospital in Albuquerque. I’m going with Ellen for you.” He looked down at the three tiny babies nestled at her side and felt something ache inside him, something awe-filled and uncertain and glorious all at the same time. Then he looked into her shining black eyes and he sighed.

  He didn’t want to go on a wild-goose chase around the reservation right now. And he had a very bad feeling that that might be what this turned out to be. But he knew his wife. And if he didn’t do it, even under these circumstances, she would. He was relatively sure that she would strap those babies to her back and set off on the mission herself.

  He told her what he knew, Catherine breaking in occasionally with a gasp or another burst of incredulous muttering. Finally Shadow nodded.

  “Go. You’ve got to go. We’ll be at University Hospital waiting for you.”

  Mac’s eyes narrowed. “Liar.”

  Shadow only smiled.

  * * *

  They took Mac’s Explorer. Dallas hung on to the armrest as the vehicle lurched and heaved over open desert. He couldn’t believe they were traveling this way, but apparently it was the quickest way to the place Mac wanted to go, and the whole night had taken on a nightmarish distortion anyway.