by Sandi Ault
She looked down. “Jesus! It’s got to be a six-or seven-hundred-foot drop to the bottom! How far down do you plan to go?”
“There’s a ruin. Well, there are lots of them in this canyon. But where I think the kid might have gone—it’s a couple hundred feet down, then over, then back up again to that wide ledge there, then down again, and over. It’s a long, arduous climb.”
We stood at the edge in silence. I shivered. “You take my rifle, and cover me from up here.”
“Cover you? I’d be happy to, but it’s going to be hard to see around all those ledges and overhangs, even if it weren’t for all this mist. There are times when I can hardly see twenty feet in front of me as it is. I’m not letting you go down there by yourself, it’s too dangerous.”
“Just do it, Diane. Take the rifle and try to keep sight of me. And one more thing.” I felt around in my shirt and found the map, pulled it out and spread it open against a nearby stone. “See this place here?” I pointed to a site on the northern aspect, on the way to the four-wheel trail coming up the mountain from the other side. “There’s a twisted old juniper about forty feet west of the trail here—it looks like a big old bonsai, really picturesque. It stands there all by itself, no other trees around for about a dozen yards. Step out twenty paces due west of it, and there’s a cache buried there under the silt. There’s water, some food, blankets, ropes, some horse feed, and maybe even some ammo—I don’t remember. But if you need it, it’s there.” I watched a small bonsai sprout from the place on the map, then quickly folded it to make the apparition go away.
“Thanks for the info, but I won’t be going anywhere until you come back up.”
“I’m just saying it’s there. Remember it.”
Diane tucked the map into the pocket of the parka. “Okay. Forty feet west, then twenty paces west of the tree.”
“You got it.” I started to lower myself into the gorge.
“I don’t see what good this will do. You’re going to need help. You’re not right…you’re having hallucinations. I don’t want you to go down there alone. Wait until your forest ranger comes, and let him go down with you.”
“Just watch my back.”
On the climb down, it started to rain gently. The rocks and ledges were slick and cold. The temperature dropped. In spite of the hard work of climbing, I was chilly. I worked my way past the numbered digs, the dwellings with the corn silos, on toward the ceremonial ruin. A cold mist hung like clouds lodged in the gorge, obscuring my view of all else but the next rock in front of me. Once, I thought I heard an animal panting. The thick vapor that surrounded me muffled even the sound of the waterfall created by the flooded wash. I moved down-canyon, climbing over slide areas, across the ragged ledges, and through narrow passages where twisted junipers clung to the walls of the ravine, permitting me to step through their branches when there was no other solid footing. A few times, I stopped to look up toward the rim, hoping to see Diane, but the fog was so thick that I could only see a few yards above me.
I felt an outrageous thirst, and my stomach threatened to send up any juices that might remain. I stopped on a flat rock, clutched my middle, and bent over, hoping to get it over with. I heard feet scrambling behind me, small rocks stirring and then plummeting down the side of the cliff. I straightened and turned to heighten my radar. More scuffling, another rock clipping each stone face in sequence as it fell, click, click, click. And heavy breathing. Close.
I started around the giant boulder that would lead me to the ledge to the ceremonial ruin. My feet wouldn’t cling to the wet basalt, and I began to slip. I clutched with my hands for a purchase, and met with sandpaper grit as the rough surface abraded the skin of my palms. As I slid, I twisted to try to get my backside against the rock face, and my left knee hit a hard out-jut of stone. Pain shot up my leg, through my bones. I saw the leg of my jeans turn red, felt the warmth and wet of blood soaking into the denim against my skin. In the distance, I heard men’s voices calling, something in Tiwa. They sounded far away, up-canyon, perhaps near the high lagoon under the cliff overhang.
I turned again and tried to pull myself back up. My bloody knee rang with pain when I put weight on the leg. Again I heard panting from behind me, and small rocks bouncing as they dislodged and toppled to places below. I forced myself to ignore my injury, pulled my body up on a sheet of rough granite, and scrambled up to the high shelf that led to the ceremonial ruin. I stopped to catch my breath and saw a trail of blood drops on the stone below me, thinning with the mist and rain.
Now the hard lift lay before me. I hoisted myself by my arms, and as I jumped, a sharp pain tore through muscle and bone and caused me to cry out in agony. The toe of my right boot swung high and clung to the shelf. I heard footsteps somewhere near, the wheezing breath of exertion. I hung in terror for an instant, and then I strained and struggled and wrestled my body onto the ledge.
Before I could raise myself from my prone position, I felt hands grab at my waist. I turned to see Hunter Contreras below me, grasping at my pack. “What are you doing?” I wrestled to free myself of his grip, and to rise to my knees, but he held a firm grip on the belt of my pack.
“Is the boy up there? You can’t go up there!”
“Let go of me!” I pushed at his hand, and he tugged hard, almost pulling me off the narrow ridge. I strained back toward the cliff face.
“I’m not letting you go up there. If the boy’s up there, I’ll go. Leave him alone.”
I pushed myself upward, almost to my knees, but Contreras jerked again on the belt of my pack and pulled me down onto my chest, nearly sweeping me from the ledge. My fingers clutched at the stone. My left knee throbbed. I pressed the length of my right side into the cliff and reached for my knife. I couldn’t get it out of its sheath. I worked my hand under my abdomen and unfastened the pack belt.
“Come down here!” Contreras tugged at my pack.
I slid my hand farther up my torso beneath me and fingered the sternum strap. “How did you get here?” I asked.
He stopped pulling for a moment and smiled. “We have a few secrets, even from your government, who supposedly owns this land. You know nothing about this ground. This is our sacred place. We teach our children about it. Our ancestors walked these ledges long before you whites set foot in this country. We know every rock and pebble, every root of the Standing People, every way the water flows.”
I flicked the clasp on the sternum strap.
Contreras yanked again on the pack, and it gave little resistance. He teetered backward, and caught himself. “Come down here now!”
I rolled slightly away from the cliff face, raising my shoulder and sliding my right arm out of the strap.
Hunter could see now what I was trying to do, and he groped for my arm. But I scooted into the cliff wall, and the big man lurched and grasped, ultimately latching on to the only thing he could reach—the pack. I extended my left arm and the ruck slid off my back, over my shoulder, and away from my body as Contreras, pulling hard, fell backward from the force of his own motion. His massive shoulders led as he toppled in reverse, like a giant tree. I heard a hard thud as flesh struck stone, but the Indian made no noise, no cry of complaint or fear. I heard nothing more, no scrambling, no movement. I placed my palms under my shoulders and raised up to look over my slender perch, but I could see nothing below me but thick vapor. I listened. No sound.
“Hunter?” I heard my voice echo in the gorge.
“Contreras? Are you down there?”
There was no answer. I gasped. “Oh, God.”
I raised to my knees, then turned myself carefully against the cliff face and worked my way across the shelf to the ruin. My leg was swelling in my jeans and the denim felt like a tourniquet, squeezing off the blood supply. My thigh throbbed.
Again, I heard panting behind me. Had Contreras gotten back up from his fall? Or was it an animal? I started to pull myself up to the floor of the ceremonial site when something struck my shoulder hard, a stone,
which then fell on my hand and smashed my fingers. “Oh! Damn! Ouch!”
A voice came through the haze. “Wolf girl?”
“Yellow Hawk?” I hauled myself into the ruin. The peyote chief crouched in the corner, his arms outstretched, shielding something behind him. He wore only a threadbare T-shirt and jeans, and his skin was scratched and scraped everywhere, his face and arms were bruised. He looked thin and gaunt. I held my hands up to pacify him. “Don’t throw any more rocks, okay?”
He nodded, and I took a moment to check my shoulder, which had taken a good blow. I massaged the injury as I moved carefully toward Yellow Hawk.
He shifted to the side, and I saw a small mound beneath a plaid flannel shirt and a jean jacket. “This boy need help,” he said. He pulled back the shirt slightly to reveal Sam Dreams Eagle’s head. “He is cold and hungry.”
The boy barely stirred, making a small whimper. I dropped to my knees beside him and placed the backs of my fingers against his cheek, which was cool to the touch. The child shook with cold, his teeth chattered. I felt his carotid artery for a pulse—it was weak. “He has hypothermia. We have to get him out of here. Now.” I shrugged out of my poncho and draped it over him.
Yellow Hawk looked at me, his face worn and worried. “I cannot.” He looked down at his bare feet. They were bruised and bloody, the toes blackened. One foot was swollen to almost twice the size of the other. He pulled up the leg of his jeans to reveal a shard of bone protruding from the skin at the ankle.
“Oh, God,” I said. “How long ago did that happen?” I put a hand to his ankle, looking for a pulse.
“They take me to mountain, take away moccasin so I cannot leave.”
I touched the black toes. Gangrene.
“Who brought you here?” I said, feeling for a pulse higher in the leg. His legs were blue, the veins swollen, inflamed.
“My people take me, Indigo Falls. I am ashamed.”
“To Indigo Falls? And you got away and came here? With the boy?”
“No, I swim. Boy run, this place, where old ones live. I tell him, ‘If they come for you, run! Run to where old ones live!’ He is good boy. I swim here.”
“You swam here?”
“Time before time, river flow here, old ones live here. River change, go back through mountain, flow down, into valley. People move, build home out of earth, our home now. Our story tell all this. But some story older than our language, in time-before tongue. Only few old ones speak now. Story tell of way of changing river, hole through mountain, through House of Dead, through Eye of Great Spirit. No one know—if we go through, will we live? I swim.”
“You went through the mouth of the falls, you swam through the mountain? Where? To that lagoon over there?”
He nodded. “Long time, no air. No light. I am ready die anyway, I am ashamed.”
“Why are you ashamed, Yellow Hawk? You came through the mountain to protect little Sam. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I am ready die, not this boy. Not you. I know now what I must do, my time, my life. I save our language, save the People from their self. But you must save this child. And you. I am already dead.”
“No, you’re not. I’m going to try to figure out how to get some help for all of us here, just let me think. In my pack, I had a space blanket, one of those folded foil sheets. If I could get down there and find it, it might help Sam until…”
Yellow Hawk pointed a finger behind me, his eyes two black saucers.
I turned just as Hunter gained the shelf. A grit-packed, bloody bruise etched one side of his face. “You got away, old man,” he said. “If you’d just stayed put, you’d have been safe, we would have brought you back home, and all this would have been done. Same with the boy.”
I shifted my right side away from Contreras and felt along my belt for my holster. The sky rumbled, and a heavy rain began to pour.
Yellow Hawk used his hands against the wall to raise himself up on one foot. He spoke in Tiwa, shouting above the din of the pelting rain. Then he reached into his shirt and pulled at a piece of leather thong. He drew up the lacing; a shiny CD was strung from it. The old chief spoke in English now. “I tell my nephew, be willing die for what he did. I give him medicine, take him Bison People for judgment. I am ashamed, my nephew. Now I am ready die, too. All for this.” He brandished the CD in front of him as he spoke, then released it and hopped alongside the wall, using his hands against the rock to bring him closer to Contreras. “But this boy, this wolf girl. They—”
“Wait!” Hunter lunged at the old man, grasping for the CD, and the two began to struggle. “Give me that, old man,” he grunted. “That has to go to the Scalp House for ceremony. Nobody else has to die, just give me that.”
I quickly released the snap on my holster and pulled out my gun. Yellow Hawk’s body wavered between me and Contreras as the men grappled for the shiny prize, the old chief surprisingly resilient against Hunter’s youth and size. They rocked against the stacked rock half-wall, the top stones jarring loose and toppling down into free fall. Contreras slammed Yellow Hawk back against the cliff face, and I saw the old man’s head snap on his neck, but he pushed back, launching his long, wiry body into Hunter’s chest like a projectile. “This will not go to Scalp House, be a war prize,” he said, grasping at his chest and holding up the shiny disc. “This thing bring the People sickness. First, my nephew. Now you and others drawing power from this. You make old witchcraft, kind the People put away long time ago because it evil.” He pointed to the red-stained petroglyph of the man/bear figure looming behind him. “You use evil, try harm this wolf girl. You bring wrath of Red Bear—mark her face, try take her spirit time and again, but this wolf girl strong—I see all this in vision. I will take this with me,” Yellow Hawk said, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “This the thing I must do!”
“You’re not taking it anywhere,” Contreras said. “Give it to me.” They smashed into the wall again, and the rocks gave way, collapsing. The wrestling twosome hung half over the ledge, their heads and shoulders suspended over nothing more than fog and space as the rain pounded on them. Yellow Hawk, on top, managed to draw back onto one knee.
I focused my pistol on Hunter’s chest. “All right!” I yelled. “Stop it, both of you. Contreras, get up.”
The two men turned to look at me in surprise, their faces streaming with moisture, their long hair slicked to their heads and dripping. Yellow Hawk put one hand on a patch of standing rock wall and pulled himself upright. Contreras slid on his back until he was on firm ground, then rolled to his side and came up. As he rose, he lunged at Yellow Hawk and grabbed for the CD, still tied around the chief’s neck.
The old man started, clutched at the leather thong, then turned his head to look at me. As soon as his eyes met mine, I knew his mind. I charged forward, but too late. Yellow Hawk dove to the side, over the cliff, as Hunter lurched—too late to stop him—and the old man flew downward, like a hawk swooping out of the sky toward its prey, disappearing into the mist.
Contreras fell to his knees, almost drawn into the fall with the chief. “Aaaaaaagh! Look what you’ve done!” he screamed. He grabbed one of the stones from the rubble of the wall and hurled it at me, knocking the pistol out of my hand and into the corner firepit. I scrambled after the gun, but Hunter grabbed my feet and dragged me toward him. Marbles of ice began pummeling us, stinging my hands and arms. “We need that for ceremony!” he yelled. “Nobody else had to die, if you just would have stayed out of it! We were handling it ourselves, but you had to come up here!” The din of noise from the rain and hail forced him to yell even louder to be heard.
I kicked my feet, but Contreras held them fast. I reached on my belt and found the collapsible nightstick. I sprung it from its holder, threw out my arm to extend it, then sat up quickly and struck the big man on the head with it twice. He released me, and I scuffled backward toward the pistol. But Hunter flung himself onto me, grabbed my right arm, and pinned it against the ground. I
raised my left forearm and pressed it against his chest, keeping him at bay. His weight was on my legs and I couldn’t kick or knee him—only my left hand was free. I remembered Diane’s hapkido instructions: Always look for the weak point. There’s always a weak point. I plunged my left hand into Contreras’s neck and clutched his jugular. I squeezed until I saw his face reddening, his eyes bulging. I dug my fingers hard into his throat. Hunter opened his mouth and roared. He pulled away from my grasp, and I twisted my right hand out of his grip, raised up, and struck him smartly on the temple with the nightstick. I wriggled my legs out from under his body as his head reeled backward from the blow. I turned onto my hands and knees and started to get up. But Contreras seized me around the waist from behind, picked me up, and rose to his feet. He moved toward the edge as I kicked and wriggled. He swung backward, ready to hurl me over the side, and I threw my arms behind his head and grabbed on tightly. Hunter roared again, and then suddenly released me onto the floor of the ruin. I dashed to the firepit and grabbed the gun. I turned it on him and he raised his palm as if to stop the bullet, the other hand clutching his chest.
We stood gasping, both of us, staring at each other, gulping air, the rain and hail pounding us. Hunter lowered his hand in resignation. “We never wanted to harm the boy, or the old man.” He clutched his temples and shook his head. “We only wanted…” He looked toward the edge where Yellow Hawk had just flown. “They would have talked. We just wanted to keep them quiet, until we finished ceremony for this.”
“We? Who? You and your old, senile shaman, Wolfskin?”
“That old grandfather knows the old medicine. We needed him when Yellow Hawk betrayed the tribe, just like his nephew did.”
“Betrayed the tribe? How?”
“He was supposed to get that CD-ROM from his nephew after he gave him the truth medicine, bring it to the Scalp House for ceremony, so we could offer it to the war god. That is the old way when one of the People betrays the tribe. But when that old man took his nephew out to the buffalo for his judgment, you got involved. And the boy. And the old man never came with the disc. He was ready to ride up the mountain when we caught up with him. He told us he never found the CD, that his nephew didn’t have it. But we needed it for the Scalp ceremony to appease Red Bear, to cleanse our spirits from the betrayal, to give us our power back.”