by Sandi Ault
“Who ordered Jerome Santana killed?”
Contreras winced. “It was voted that he be judged by the Bison People. It was the old one’s duty to take him for that judgment. He was shamed by his nephew’s actions. He wanted to do it. Now put the gun down, okay?”
“You poisoned my wolf!”
He held up both hands and shook them. “No, no, I didn’t do that. We wanted to search your place, so Grandpa Wolfskin blew medicine in him, but he must have gotten too much. We didn’t mean to hurt him.”
I choked, my hands trembling with anger, the barrel of my automatic still aimed at his chest. “Well, you hurt him. You may even have killed him.”
He shook his head. “Believe me, we didn’t want to hurt him. We didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“You put something in my water.”
He nodded.
“Peyote?”
“We had to slow you down. We needed to take care of things.”
“Take care of things? What things were you going to take care of? And why did you want to search my place? What did you hope to find?”
“What the one who just died was wearing around his neck. We knew someone from outside wanted the language. At first, I didn’t believe it was you. But later, I tried to talk to you and you avoided me. All the while, you kept snooping, asking questions. We thought you found the disc.”
“You thought I—”
Above us, a crash, and a blast of small rock, then the explosion of cliffs cracking and stones shrieking as they tore away from the side of the gorge. I jumped back to the overhang wall and stretched my arms over Sam Dreams Eagle just as a colossal boulder pounded to the ground, on top of Contreras. A river of water followed the stone, and a deluge poured in a newly formed waterfall. The once-silty floor of the space began to flood. Through the rain and hail, I saw part of a leg and a hand extending from beneath the massive rock. A dark red pool began to seep from under the stone and merge with the water spilling onto the ruin floor. I ran to the megalith and pushed with all my might, groaning as water splashed me. It was useless—the stone mass was too heavy. Another slide of shale fell, and I jumped back under the overhang. When I looked again, I could see no trace of Hunter Contreras’s form, which was now buried beneath a mound of basalt.
“No! Oh, God, no!” I dropped my gun and my hands flew to my face as if to block out the sight I’d already witnessed. All the air seemed to have been pressed out of my chest, and I was unable to move. I started to sob, but no sound came, no tears. I watched the red stain swell into the pooling water. I stooped to pick up the pistol again and holster it, then retraced my steps toward the boy. What can I do? Across the ravine, I watched a half dozen other cataracts develop instantly, as the surge of rain rushed over the rim, carrying topsoil, stones, and small trees from the land above.
Another boom, and I heard more stone cracking, the scarp splitting nearby. I grabbed little Sam around the waist and tried to stir him to consciousness, but he whimpered and merely fluttered his eyes. I needed my arms to climb; I couldn’t carry him. Pooling water in the floor rose toward the corners—I needed to get him up before he got any wetter than he already was. I lifted the child to a seated position and propped his back against the wall. His head bobbed against his chest. I took off my hat and slipped two of the three remaining ropes of prayer ties from around my neck, separated them, and used my knife to cut off the prayer bundles. I cut one rope into three sections. I turned Yellow Hawk’s jean jacket upside down and put the flannel shirt on the ground right side up above it, so that the shirttails overlapped just slightly where they met. I pressed a small stone under the two layers of cloth, gathered the fabric around the stone to hold it in, and tied sinew at the neck beneath this pebble head. I repeated this in the center and at the other side, effectively joining the bottom edges of the garments together—then tested to see if they would easily pull apart. My handiwork held. I had fashioned a makeshift sling. I threaded the other rope through the sleeves of the jacket alongside Sam’s slight legs. I worked his arms into the sleeves of the shirt. Climb on my back and ride, I thought.
I spread Sam’s legs open, sat down, and scooted my backside up against his chest, reaching around me for his arms in the flannel shirt. I pulled them around my neck. Then I reached behind me and lifted Sam’s bottom, leaned forward, and pushed his weight onto my back. He groaned. I stood up, adjusted his legs so they came around my waist, and tied the ends of the rope emerging from the denim sleeves over my belt. I started to move, but I felt the child shift downward, his body slumping, his arms sliding back through the flannel shirtsleeves. I quickly grabbed Sam’s wrists and pulled them back over my shoulders. How can I keep him in place so I can climb with him? Hail pelted my head and my arms. The rim of the canyon had split open in a dozen places, and water poured over rock slides and crumbled ledges. I had to move fast!
My handcuffs! I snapped them out of the holder on my belt and pulled on the boy’s arms until I had them in position. His wrists were too small, so I cuffed each arm just above the elbow. I stooped to pick up the prayer bundles I’d cut off their strands. With no time for ceremony, I tossed them toward the boulder that now trapped Hunter Contreras’s remains. I pulled the poncho on and worked to drape it over my passenger, as well as me, then donned my hat and tightened the chin cord.
I started around the megalith, feeling like a moving tent, with little Sam under wraps on my back.
38
Guiding Spirit
Rain and hail battered us as I managed to drop down from the floor of the space onto the thin shelf of stone. Ahead, where I normally descended to bypass the large boulder and find the next ledge, the wall of the ravine had been shattered. A river of cascading reddish water gushed over a newly formed rock slide. We were trapped. I started to edge backward. The ledge groaned and cracked, then belched a peal of thunderous tearing. The outer stacked-rock wall, the floor of the ceremonial room, and the huge stone that had fallen there, all began to rip away from the cliff and slide downward. I bent my knees for balance and pressed my face and chest into a wall of flat rock, spreading my hands out to feel for depressions to hold on to. I watched the sacred ruin quake, crumble, and then plunge into the abyss. Water poured from above in a vast, thundering falls past the place where I had just stood.
Now my boots rested on a tiny escarpment, with nothing but slides on either side of me, mud and rock and surging water. I looked above me—only sheer granite. How will we ever get out of here?
There was nothing to do but to try to make my way down one of the slide areas and hope to find a better place beneath for a climb out. I reached behind me and readjusted Sam’s weight, then stuck my good leg out into the rocks and silt to the side. I crouched, and then lowered myself on my good knee onto the slope, bending it deeply so that I would slide on my shins and elbows, protecting Sam’s arms and legs, which met across my front. I let go—my swollen, injured knee only half bent and out to one side—and down we slid, bumping and ripping on rocks and roots. The poncho soon bunched up under my neck in front. My jeans and shirtsleeves tore, and my knees knocked into stones. The wet dirt worked its way under my pant legs and up my arms. My chin and cheeks grated against the ground. With a thud that made my afflicted knee ring with pain, my boots landed on a boulder. I flipped to one side, one foot caught on a root, I plowed face first into a slick of wet mud and pebbles, my back twisted and my legs toppled down to the side of me, and our downward slide came to a halt. My spine rebounded. My neck snapped back then forward again, and my forehead smashed into stone. My vision blurred and I felt myself slipping out of consciousness. I fought to stay alert. The ground started spinning, and I couldn’t tell which way was up. I grabbed for a handhold and found the root. I clung to it and remained in my crouch while waves of dizziness and nausea threatened to make me black out, the weight of the boy on my back pulling me off balance. Finally I felt the spinning stop.
I assessed my new position: somehow I had managed to keep my weig
ht off the boy, even as I tumbled and landed. His legs and arms had gotten scratched and scraped some, but that was the worst of it. I shook Sam’s legs. “Are you okay, little guy?”
No answer. Not even a whimper. I looked around me. The rain continued to pound, new-formed water chutes thundered into the gorge, and now, a few hundred feet below me, a screaming river of whitewater swept through the floor of the gulch, ripping up trees and dislodging boulders. To my left, it looked like I could perhaps climb across a scarp and then take an upward path. But Sam’s weight was more than I could manage and keep steady while climbing, especially with a wounded knee. I wasn’t sure I could make the ascent with him. To the right, I saw a downward course leading farther into the ravine. Perhaps I could find some shelter from the rain, an overhang that was secure, someplace I could safely put Sam and then go for help. I had moved to climb downward when pebbles tumbled from above, striking the brim of my hat, my shoulders. I looked up.
Mountain stood on a perch above me, wagging his tail. I shook my head, disbelieving my senses.
“Mountain! How did you get here? Are you okay? Who’s with you? Did Kerry bring you? Hello? Kerry? Hello! Anybody there?” The wolf yipped at me, and turned as if to lead me upward.
“I can’t!” I cried. “We have to go down. We have to get down off this slide area.”
Mountain locked eyes with me, something he had never done before. He lowered his nose and intensified his stare. Then he swung his head to one side, wagged his tail, and danced in place. He squeaked. This way, come on! he seemed to be saying.
“No, come here, buddy. You come with me! We’ve got to go down.” I started to move downward.
The wolf yipped again.
“Oh, Mountain, I’ve been so worried about you. There’s nothing I want more in this world than to be with you.” I burst into tears. “But you have to listen to me. We’ve got to go down!”
My best friend dropped to his belly, lying on the slope. He lowered his muzzle onto his paws and continued to make eye contact.
“You’ve got to come with me. We’ve got to go down. Now come on.”
I braced myself with my bad leg and tendered the other out for another foothold. A huge crack of thunder broke above us. A new burst of sleet and intensified rain pelted me, stinging my arms. Small hailstones drummed on my hat and the back of my poncho. Soon, I couldn’t see more than a foot or two in any direction. Mountain was out of my range of sight. I clung in position, unable to do more. In a few minutes, the hail and sleet began to subside.
I looked up. The wolf was gone. A fist-sized chunk of basalt bounced past me and narrowly missed striking my head.
“Mountain! Mountain?” I had to find Mountain. I began to work slowly upward and to the left. I dug my hands into rock and silt, slammed the toes of my boots into red mud or tucked the tips of them onto shards of stone. I stopped every few feet to catch my breath, to readjust Sam’s weight, to look above me for Mountain. I spied a rounded slice of rock that spanned the canyon wall horizontally. Through the rain, I thought I saw the flash of a tail wagging. I climbed to the shelf and pulled myself up, gasping for breath. A small ruin, a corn silo, rested beneath a deep rock overhang. I crawled inside and pulled off my hat, the poncho. I untied the sinew and released the boy’s legs, then lifted his arms over my head. I pushed him farther back against the cliff wall to get him out of the weather. It was cold, the rain freezing on contact with the rock. There was just enough room for me to sit up in the cave. I huddled next to the child and draped the poncho over us to keep us both warm. Sam moaned once, softly.
A curtain of water poured over the overhang, nearly obscuring the view of anything beyond. It was as if all the moisture that had been denied the high desert for decades now gushed from the heavens.
“Mountain!” I called into the thundering downpour. “Mountain!”
39
Getting Out
Rain and hail fell for nearly an hour. I continued to peer out through the sheeting water for signs of my beloved wolf. I saw glimpses of cascading chutes of whitewater on the opposite side of the gorge. I trembled with cold, my teeth chattering. Sam whimpered and stirred, but never woke.
When the downpour turned to drizzle, I slipped out from under the poncho and onto the slice of stone I’d crossed to the cave. I edged out as far as I dared and looked up toward the canyon rim, only about a hundred feet above me. At once, I heard a rifle shot. Diane shouted, “Over here! She’s down here!”
Kerry held me up while members of the Mountain Search and Rescue Team loaded Sam Dreams Eagle onto the sled and into the helicopter.
“There are paramedics down below,” Roy said, “but it’s too muddy for ’em to get up the trail in a vehicle, even an ATV. We’ll get the chopper to fly back for you as soon as they can.”
“I’m all right,” I said. “I just need to sit down, get my weight off this leg.”
“You’re beat all to hell,” the Boss said, “and you’ll get in that chopper just as soon as it gets back, and that’s an order. We’re lucky the storm finally broke so we could get that bird in here to get the boy. They’re flying him to critical care in Albuquerque. Then they’ll be back for you.” He moved aside and spoke into his satellite radio.
Kerry gave me a squeeze and helped me to the tailgate of Roy’s truck. “Whatever that guy put in my water,” he said, “it sure messed me up.”
“Me, too,” I said. “It was peyote. He admitted it.”
“Peyote? I don’t know how you made it all the way up here, babe. And to navigate that canyon like you did, and get the boy to that cave…”
“I think I had some protection. Remember the tea Tecolote gave me?”
“Oh, yeah. I could have used some of that. I ended up backtracking for a while, heading down the mountain instead of up. I had the strangest visions. Then I remembered the prayer ties you gave me. I opened one of the little bundles and ate it. My head cleared right up.”
“You ate the herbs in the prayer bundle?”
“Yeah, wasn’t that what they were for?”
I smiled. “Maybe so. It never occurred to me to do that. How did Roy get up here? He said the trail was too muddy for the paramedics to come.”
“I guess he had a hunch when you called him from the stable. He started up the back trail in his truck right about the time we came up from the pueblo on horseback. He got here before the main deluge started, and was going to hike over to the falls. He ran into Diane right after you’d gone down into the ravine, and he called for the search and rescue team. They came up on horseback because by then there was no other way in. I only got here an hour or so before them. Diane sent me after your buried cache.”
“I thought this blanket smelled musty,” I said, sniffing my woolen wrap.
“That was good thinking of you to tell her about that stuff. We’ve used almost everything you had buried in that old oil drum. Oh—and I found something of yours on the way here.”
“What?”
He reached into the bed of the truck and produced the sunflower Tecolote had given me.
“Where’d you find it?”
“Just after we forded the wash, on the ground under a big tree.”
I took the stem. The flower was smashed and muddied. “It looks like I feel.”
A crowd of men stood near the horses, some of them packing rappelling gear. Two of them broke ranks and came toward Roy’s truck. I saw that they were Tanoah men, wearing the apronlike black wraps, their hair tied at the back of their necks. One of them spoke to me. “Thank you for saving our nephew, Sam Dreams Eagle.”
“You’re his uncles?”
They smiled. “We are all his uncles, men our age. He is a child of our tribe. We are all family.”
I sighed. “I hope he’s going to be okay.”
They nodded. “Thank you,” they said in unison, and they walked away.
“How’d those guys get here?” I asked.
“My escorts.” Kerry smiled. “I made the mist
ake of trying to go past the gate to Indigo Falls. I didn’t get very far. After I explained what we were doing, and figured out where you’d gone, they rode up here with me to help look for the boy.”
Diane strolled up to the pickup, grinning. “Hey, I guess the tribe has backed out of their claims about you starting the stampede. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I doubt you or I will be applying for unemployment. Sounds like there was a lot of kiss-and-make-up between agencies and nations when they found out you got the boy out alive. But if you ever get tired of resource protection, you could go into shoe making.” She held up a vinyl-wrapped foot.
I smiled. “I’m tired of everything right now. I just want to go home.” I suddenly remembered the spirit guide who’d led me to my stone sanctuary in the worst of the storm. “I want to see Mountain.”
40
The Journey
Wiley Mason answered the door himself this time. “Can my wolf come in,” I asked, “or should we talk outside?” Mountain wagged his tail at the tall man.
Mason bent over to examine my companion. “So this is the famous wolf who practically rose from the dead, is it? They say they found the eye of an owl in the cup you left beside him. Is that true?”
“You heard about all that? Already?”
“Yes, well, I am the keeper of legends, my dear. The people bring me all their stories. Anyway, to answer your question: it seems I have no choice—unless, of course, I want to be rude to a local four-legged celebrity. And you’re clearly unwilling to leave him, even for a moment. Besides, he’s delightful. Bring him in.”