Tribal Ways

by Alex Archer

  Their battle that afternoon hadn’t been without cost. Along with Jake, two other Iron Horse People had died, including a young woman. Five more had been injured badly enough to require medical attention, including Johnny. One man had broken his neck; he was in a coma and was almost certainly crippled for life.

  The merriment in the Bad Medicine had a brittle quality. Despite the nature of the club’s victory, and the inevitable rush of elation when you face deadly danger and survive.

  Annja could see Johnny felt it more than anybody. His brave and cheerful demeanor was a mask to hearten his comrades. “Are you okay?” she asked. “This must have taken a real toll on you.”

  “I’m touched by your concern,” Johnny said. “But I’m fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He shook his head. “I wish there were some other way to do this. But if we don’t stand up to people like the Dogs, what do we stand for at all?”

  “Compassion without softness,” Billy said, nodding approval. “Hard to beat that combination.” Annja wasn’t sure whether he was talking about her or Johnny. Maybe both.

  Johnny smiled a strained smile and pushed back from the table. “Well, I should probably circulate. This is something we need to celebrate. Especially given what it cost us.”

  Shortly thereafter Billy went off to play pool with Snake, who trounced him soundly. Annja was content to sit quietly by the sidelines. She enjoyed the all-too-rare sense of belonging, tinctured with sadness as it was. She knew it wouldn’t last for long—she’d be gone in a few days, and unlikely ever to return.

  But maybe not that soon, a small persistent voice in her head reminded her. The skinwalker’s still at large.

  Not one word had been said about the I-40 murders amidst the extensive and continuous coverage of the foiling of the Dog Soldier plot. Yet Annja remained convinced some connection must exist, at least between the attack on the Oklahoma university dig and the no-longer-underground war in Comanche County.

  Just as she found herself starting to give in to fatigue the party began to break up. Angel and Ricky drove her back to the safe house and dropped her off. Johnny hadn’t yet returned. Annja decided that might be for the best. She barely had energy to totter to her room and collapse on the bed.

  A KNOCK ON THE DOOR frame woke her. Despite fatigue that still weighed her down as if the bedsheets were made of lead Annja snapped fully alert.

  She opened her eyes. Snake stood in long lean silhouette against a jittering spill of colored light from the living room. “Annja,” the Iron Horse woman said. “You need to come. Now.”

  Annja wore a long T-shirt over her panties. She hurriedly added a blue-checked flannel man’s shirt from the closet and hastened to the living room, disregarding the cold air on her bare legs.

  Johnny and Billy were there, along with several other Horses. They all stared, grimly rapt, at the widescreen television.

  On it, George Abell was speaking to what was obviously a handheld camera.

  “We call upon our brothers and sisters of color to rise to join us in our righteous rebellion against the capitalistic, paternalistic, racist United States. We have fought from within as long as we could. Now the time has come to strike.”

  Abell wore buckskins, war paint, a bone-bead breastplate, all dominated by a slightly tattered-looking eagle-feather war bonnet. He seemed to be standing in front of the white-painted interior wall of a house to make his manifesto.

  “They posted the video on YouTube twenty minutes ago,” Billy said in a low voice when Annja perched on the arm of the sofa beside him. “They apparently also e-mailed copies to various TV stations and the cops and FBI.”

  “Today fascist, reactionary elements interfered with our direct action against the opening of a new casino to exploit the Comanche people and the greed of consumerism-maddened whites. Lest you think, though, that the revolution has been thwarted—or that the Dog Society can no longer strike effectively against the oppressors—we offer this evidence.”

  The scene changed to the dimly lit interior of what seemed to be a normal residence. The viewpoint, once again evidently a small handheld camera, proceeded down a hallway.

  A figure lay in a side doorway. The camera swooped down to look at it.

  Annja sucked in a horrified breath. Dr. Susan Watson lay on her back, moaning softly. Her handsome aquiline face was masked in blood; her nightgown was torn and darkly sodden.

  “Let me go!” an angry young female voice shouted in fury. Watson stirred as if trying to rise, but even the sound of her daughter in peril wasn’t enough to overcome her injuries.

  The camera turned up and around. A burly man in dark clothes with his face painted black emerged from a bedroom with a furiously struggling Sallie Ten Bears trapped under his arm.

  Annja turned to look at Johnny, who stood by the far end of the couch with his arms folded over his muscular chest. His expression was as set as a stone statue’s.

  When she looked back at the screen Abell was on again. He seemed to be having a hard time suppressing a smirk.

  “We have taken captive the daughter of one traitor to the Indian people and sister of another,” he said. “Now we call out to Special Agent in Charge Lamont Young, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and their famous Hostage Rescue Team. Bring it on. You love war. We will give you war.

  “You have heard of us as the Dog Society. Now you may call us the Crazy Dogs Wishing to Die. I have spoken!”

  A cell phone rang. Annja jumped at the jarring sound.

  Johnny turned to pick the phone up from the table. He flipped it open.

  “Yes?”

  Sensing that she urgently needed to hear what was said, Annja moved close to him. Rather than resent the implied intrusion, once he heard the voice on the other end of the line the tall, long-haired man turned the phone away from his ear enough to allow her to listen, as well.

  “Did you like my little show, asshole?” George Abell’s voice was saying. “We’ve got your sister.”

  “I saw it,” Johnny said in a voice flat and hard as the top of an anvil. “I also saw you call out the FBI. Young is itching for a Waco-style extravaganza. You’re looking at a real bloodbath, you know that?”

  The other man uttered a shrill hoot of laughter. “That’s what we want! We want the blood to run in rivers and outrage all the Indian nations of North America. We Dogs are happy to die as martyrs to the cause. And I’m personally going to make sure Sallie dies, too.”

  “I’ll find you first, Abell,” Johnny said. “I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.”

  Abell laughed again. “You’re so predictable. Why do you think I’m calling you? I’m generously going to give you first crack at dying in a futile attempt to save your sister. If you’re smart enough to find us.

  “You can’t beat me, Johnny. You never could. You were always a punk. And you’re going to die a punk.”

  The connection broke. Johnny stared at the phone for a moment. Then he shut it with a snap.

  The video statement had ended. A glum-looking female newsreader was saying that Dr. Susan Watson remained in stable condition at Albuquerque’s University Hospital and was expected to survive. Thank God for that, Annja thought.

  “I’m gone,” Johnny said to Billy. “I have to talk to my mother. Get everyone ready to move on a moment’s notice.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Billy asked, standing with alacrity belying his bearlike bulk.

  Johnny shook his head. “I ride alone.”

  “No,” Annja said. “Get me a bike, too. I’m going with you.”

  23

  “What are you doing here?” Johnny asked. His voice had the same tone as when he’d talked to George Abell on the phone.

  Lieutenant Tom Ten Bears, wearing a crumpled-looking Oklahoma Highway Patrol uniform, froze halfway out of the chair from which he’d begun to rise when he heard steps approaching his ex-wife’s hospital room. Dr. Susan Watson, swathed in bandages
with a tube in her nose, lay propped up beside him. Her normally spare features were puffy and discolored. Her black hair with its light streaking of silver lay spread out on the pillow.

  The sight of her was like a knife in Annja’s ribs. She looks just like Paul did, she thought.

  “What the hell do you think I’m doing here?” Tom said.

  “I think he’s wondering how you got here so quickly,” Annja said, pushing in past Johnny to interpose herself between the men.

  Tom caught her eye. He scowled. She held his gaze.

  He sat down heavily.

  “Ms. Creed,” he said, “I could probably ask you the same question, couldn’t I? What are you doing here?”

  “It’s obvious, Thomas,” the injured woman said without opening her eyes. “She’s serving as a control rod to prevent a critical testosterone overload.”

  Then she did open her eyes. “Thanks for coming, son. I take it you brought Ms. Creed?”

  “I told her not to hang around with him,” Tom grumbled. “No one ever listens to the old man.”

  “Tom, everything isn’t about you. If you listened more you might not have so much to complain about. And we might still be a family. Although it was dear of you to come.” Her hand found his and squeezed it.

  “As for how I got here,” Tom said, “the department sent a plane. Looks like the skinwalker case is active again.”

  “So you’re back on it?” Annja asked.

  To her surprise he shook his head. “They let me ride along as a courtesy. I’m on administrative leave with full pay. Hardship leave, they call it. A nice way of suspending me because they’re afraid I’ll deal out some old-school Comanche justice if I get to these kidnapping bastards first.”

  He sighed. He sounded as weary as he was angry. And he sounded as if the rage simmered like magma deep inside him. Waiting to erupt.

  “After a quarter century of busting my hump twenty-five hours a day to be the best trooper there was, I’m out of it. They don’t trust me.”

  “I’m sorry, Thomas,” Dr. Watson said. “You deserve better from them.”

  Annja looked back to the injured woman. Dr. Watson’s eyes were bright and keen and fixed on her.

  “I may look like death refried,” Watson said, “but it’s mostly cosmetic damage—various contusions, gouges and bruises. I have some cracked ribs and some torn muscles in the abdominal area. It hurts, but it’s not life threatening.”

  She closed her eyes and seemed to sink into the bed again. “The dog saved me. Eowyn. The nurses tell me she’ll be fine, too. She has a broken leg and a big knot on her head.”

  “I’m so sorry about Sallie,” Annja said.

  The eyes half opened. “You didn’t kidnap her. Those monsters did.”

  “But it’s my fault,” Annja said. “I brought you and her into this. If I hadn’t contacted you—”

  “Is she not sleeping well, son?” Tom asked. “Usually she thinks clearer than that. I think the boy and I have a little more to do with this than you do, Ms. Creed.”

  “But I led the skinwalker to you,” Annja said. “It was the skinwalker that did this to you, Dr. Watson. Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. And it was clearly working with that fat little bully George Abell. All grown up into a pudgy big bully, I suppose. He was there. The creature didn’t seem to care for them much, either. I think it doesn’t like people.”

  “Will you tell us what happened?” Annja said.

  “It was late at night. We were both in bed. I was asleep—I think Sallie was reading Carrie Vaughn’s latest book. She loves the Kitty Norville stories.” She smiled slightly. “The heroine’s a werewolf. Ironic, I suppose.”

  A look of pain crossed her face. Annja doubted it had much to do with her physical wounds. “I heard a tapping at my window. Then—John’s voice. I thought. He said, very softly, he needed to talk to me. Asked me to let him in.”

  Annja flicked a look to Johnny. He had tied his hair back in a black bandanna and stood with his arms crossed over his chest. His face was set again, masklike almost; but a muscle twitched in his cheek.

  “I’ve been following the news, obviously. I know he’s been in trouble. And then suddenly he was supposed to be cleared. But I was still worried. Had something else bad happened to him?”

  “So you opened the front door to him,” Annja said.

  The two men were looking impatient. However, Dr. Watson was addressing Annja as if neither of her menfolk were there. Annja got a sudden insight into why Johnny had turned out as he had—and found time to wonder how a marriage between two people as hard-headed as the professor and the highway patrolman had lasted as long as it had.

  Watson moved her head in a faint nod on the pillow. “To it. Something strange—I heard a hissing sound as I approached the door. I thought I might be imagining it. When I opened the door I saw nothing in the porch light. So I opened the screen and stepped onto the porch—and it appeared. I never saw more of it than a shadow. But it had—seemed to have—the head and jaws of a wolf, but it could stand upright like a man.

  “It rushed me, snapping with its jaws. I fended it off with an arm, got that well bitten. It fought me all the way back into the hall. Then it got me down in the doorway to my bedroom and began to rake my stomach with its claws. That’s when Eowyn jumped it. Actually knocked the thing off me. It lashed out at the poor pup. I guess it had an arm like a man’s, but when she was slammed into a wall I saw big gashes in poor Eowyn’s side.”

  “What happened then, Mom?” Johnny asked.

  “Those men burst in. With their faces painted black. I recognized Georgie, anyway. The Navajo wolf seemed not to like their presence—seemed almost frightened of them. It darted off before it could finish either Eowyn or me.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “I tried to stop them,” she said, gripping her ex-husband’s big hand so tightly the bones stood out on the backs of her hands. “But I had lost so much blood fighting with that—that thing. I was so tired. Even when Sallie screamed, I couldn’t get up. I tried so hard, Tom. I tried.”

  “It’s okay,” Tom said. “You did what you could. You fought the thing. That took plenty of courage.”

  “And you survived,” Annja said. “That’s the important thing.”

  “No,” Watson said flatly. “The important thing is that I could not protect my daughter. I failed her.”

  “We’ll get her back,” Annja said. She raised fierce eyes first to Johnny, then to his father, daring them to contradict her. All she saw on either man’s face was pain threatening to break through their granite-hard reserve.

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said from the doorway. “You’ll have to leave now. Dr. Watson needs to rest.”

  Tom Ten Bears rose, then bent down gracelessly to kiss his ex-wife’s cheek. Then he shuffled aside, not looking at Johnny, as his son stepped up to kiss her, as well.

  “Ms. Creed?” Watson said.

  Annja bent over her. The doctor reached up and with surprising strength pulled her down to kiss Annja’s cheek.

  “What happened isn’t your fault,” she said. “But I know there’s more to you than there seems to be. You’re the responsible adult here. You make sure the boys work together.

  “Get Sallie back. And kill the men who took her.”

  She released Annja. Annja stood. “I will,” she said.

  “I thought you were the big liberal, Suze,” Tom couldn’t help himself saying from the doorway. “What’s with the call for blood and vengeance?”

  She smiled. “Well, you know what they say about liberals getting mugged? I’m a mother first. Then, I find, I am a Kiowa, the daughter of warriors. As well as ex-wife and mother to them. My political beliefs come after those things. And don’t get smug. What happened doesn’t shake my core beliefs in social justice. And if anything, it drives me closer to Johnny’s crazy libertarian beliefs than your right-wing ones.”

  Tom shook his head mournfully. “See what I had to put up with all these
years, Ms. Creed? I can’t get any respect.”

  “Don’t even try that on me, Lieutenant,” Annja said.

  When they walked out through the hospital’s sliding doors the sun was just rising into some baguette-shaped clouds above Sandia Crest. Early rush-hour traffic was already beginning to clog Lomas Boulevard in front of them. The high-desert air was crisp, but far less bitter than the Great Plains winds Annja and Johnny had pounded through on their full-throttle nocturnal ride from western Oklahoma.

  Jake’s widow, who didn’t ride herself, had consented to allow Annja to borrow her late husband’s bike. Annja had pushed it hard to keep the taillight of Johnny’s motorcycle in view, worrying alternately about running foul of traffic cops and losing control of the overpowered chopper at a hundred miles per hour in the dark and the wind.

  But they crossed the windy Plains and the pine-forested ramparts of the Sandia without incident, and rolled down a largely empty I-40 into the heart of the city by the Rio Grande.

  Tom Ten Bears stopped outside the hospital entrance and glared at his son. “If you’d just been there for your sister, instead of riding around playing rebel without a clue—”

  Johnny’s eyes flashed. “Big talk. You’re the one who drove Mom off because you always had to be right about everything—”

  Annja—had had enough.

  She stepped right between them. Despite the fact she was taller than the older man, and had plenty of presence herself, she felt like a poodle getting between a rottweiler and a wolf.

  In such circumstances, Annja Creed knew only one thing to do—attack.

  “Put your manhoods back in your pants and talk to each other. And just for a change, try listening! If you can’t tone down the roar of testosterone enough to hear each other now, then Sallie will die, there’ll be a major massacre and both of you will be complete failures as fathers, brothers and men. Comanche warriors, my ass! You’re just a pair of egotistical babies having temper tantrums at each other.”