Hour of the Hunter: With Bonus Material: A Novel of Suspense

by J. A. Jance

  “But it’s dark out there,” Effie objected.

  The old man smiled. “Darkness is my friend,” he told her.

  Effie considered herself personally responsible for bringing the old man to the hospital. She didn’t want anything to happen to him on his way home.

  “It’s just that other people might not be able to see you,” she snapped impatiently.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It isn’t far.”

  Keeping to the shoulder of the road, Looks At Nothing made his way to the gas station. At once a dog began to bark. The old man followed the sound, making the dog bark even louder.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice demanded from inside the house.

  “Looks At Nothing,” the medicine man answered. “I’m looking for Fat Crack.”

  “Just a minute,” she said. “I’ll get him.”

  Moments later, a door opened. “What do you want?” Fat Crack asked.

  “To speak to you,” Looks At Nothing answered. “About your aunt. She needs your help.”

  “My help? I thought she wanted your help. After all, you’re the medicine man.”

  Looks At Nothing settled cross-legged on the ground, took a cigarette out of his pouch, lit it, and offered it to Fat Crack. “Nawoj,” he said.

  “Nawoj,” Fat Crack returned, accepting the cigarette gracefully because it would have been rude to do otherwise. “What’s this all about?”

  “Sit,” Looks At Nothing ordered. “We must not rush.”

  Reluctantly, Fat Crack did as he was told. Although his heavy body was much younger than the gaunt old medicine man’s, it wasn’t nearly as agile. Fat Crack was used to chairs. Sitting on the hard ground was uncomfortable.

  “You are a man of great faith, are you not?” Looks At Nothing continued.

  Fat Crack was taken aback by the directness of the medicine man’s question. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose so. Why?”

  “Your aunt is in grave danger,” Looks At Nothing said.

  Fat Crack nodded. “I know,” he said.

  Somehow he had known that from the moment she asked him to go get the medicine man. From the way she acted, he knew there was something more serious at stake than just the physical damage from an automobile accident.

  “You are very still,” Looks At Nothing observed.

  “I’m thinking,” Fat Crack said. “I’m wondering what this danger to my aunt could be and why you need my help.”

  “Sit here with me for a while,” Looks At Nothing said. “Smoke with me. The two of us will hold a council and let the sacred tobacco smoke fall upon our words. In this way, we will decide what to do.”

  Part of Fat Crack, the Christian Scientist part of him, began to buck and balk. Talk of sacred tobacco smoke didn’t sit well with the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Still, the gentle power wielded by the medicine man didn’t seem inherently evil.

  “Gabe,” the woman called impatiently from the doorway of the house. “Are you coming back inside?”

  “After,” Fat Crack replied. “I will come in after, but first this old man and I are going to talk.”

  11

  “HOW DID MY daddy die?” Davy asked.

  Diana Ladd was tucking her son into his bed when he asked the direct, awful question she had dreaded for years. Always before, during oblique conversations, she had skirted the issue, promising herself that if he ever asked straight out, she would be forced to respond in kind. Wanting to protect him, she had rehearsed countless carefully nonjudgmental answers, in hopes that one day Davy would grow up and form his own opinions about his father.

  Diana sat down on the edge of the bed and placed one hand on Davy’s chest. In the soft glow of the night-light, his eyes were luminous dark pools gazing up at her. She swallowed hard.

  “He committed suicide,” she said.

  Davy frowned. “Suicide. What does that mean?”

  “Your father killed himself,” Diana answered. “With a gun.”

  “Why? Didn’t he love us?”

  Davy’s ingenuousness wrung at Diana’s heart. She fought back tears, and bitter answers as well. “He didn’t know you,” she said gently. “You weren’t even born yet.”

  “Well, why did he do it then?”

  “He was scared, I guess.”

  “About what?”

  “About what was going to happen to him. You see, there had been a…” She paused, losing heart, unable to say the word murder aloud. “There had been an accident,” she finished lamely. “Your father was afraid of getting into trouble.”

  “Did he kill someone?”

  Stunned, Diana wondered if Davy had somehow learned the truth. How else could his questions cut so close to the bones of truth? None of this was going the way she’d planned. “Is that what someone told you?” she asked.

  Davy shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to know why they called me that.”

  “Called you what?”

  “Me’akam Mad,” he replied.

  Diana Ladd knew some Papago, but not nearly as much as Davy. This she didn’t recognize at all. “What does that mean?”

  “Killer’s Child,” Davy whispered.

  Instantly, Diana was outraged. “Who called you that?”

  “Some of the Indian ladies. At the hospital. They thought I didn’t understand.”

  Not trusting her ability to speak, Diana got up and paced to the window. She stared out at a star-studded sky over the jagged black shadow of mountain. Even with the cooler running, the house was warm, but she felt suddenly chilled.

  “Is it true?” Davy insisted. “Did my father kill somebody?”

  “Yes,” Diana answered at last, abandoning all pretense. Davy had to be told.

  “Who?”

  “Her name was Gina, Gina Antone.”

  “Rita’s granddaughter?”

  Diana nodded. “Yes.”

  “But Rita loves us. Why would she if…”

  Diana turned decisively from the window. “Davy, listen to me. Your father was there when Gina died, but he didn’t do it, and he didn’t remember anything that happened. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, she was dead. Another man was there with them—a friend of your father’s, a man named Andrew Carlisle. He tried to put all the blame on your father.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The other man? To Carlisle?” Davy nodded. “He went to jail, finally. The state prison. Rita and I saw to it.”

  “But he didn’t die?”

  “No.”

  “People still think my father did it.”

  “Probably. He wasn’t alive to defend himself.”

  “And the other man was?”

  “Yes, and he hired expensive lawyers. He was an Anglo, a well-known one, a teacher from the university, and the dead girl was only an Indian. Everybody acted as though it didn’t matter if an Indian got killed, as though she weren’t important. With your father dead, it was a terrible time for me, but it was worse for Rita. She didn’t have anyone to help her, so I did—with the police, with Detective Walker and the prosecutor. If I hadn’t been there, Carlisle never would have gone to jail.”

  Most of Diana Ladd’s impassioned explanation fell on deaf ears. Davy plucked out only one solid fact from the raging torrent of words. “Detective Walker? The man who was here this morning? The one who took me for my stitches?”

  “Yes.”

  “He knew about my father, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Abruptly, Davy flopped over on his side, turning away from her and facing the wall. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  “But, Davy…”

  “I’m going to sleep.”

  Drained and rejected, Diana started to leave the room, but Davy called to her before the door closed. “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “How come everybody knew about my father but me?”

  The hurt and betrayal in Davy’s voice squeezed her heart. “It was a terrible thing,” she told him. “You weren’t old e
nough to understand.”

  “I’m old enough now,” he muttered fiercely into his pillow when the door clicked shut. “I am too.”

  But he wasn’t. Not really. He lay awake for a long time after his mother left him, trying to understand why his father would have wanted to be dead so soon, why he hadn’t wanted to wait around long enough to meet his own son.

  Davy wished he could have asked him. He really wanted to know.

  Looks At Nothing was gone, leaving Rita alone with her memories of that long ago, fateful summer. Homesick, Understanding Woman had wanted to return to Ban Thak. It was too hot in Burnt Dog Village. She longed to be in Coyote Sitting where it was cool and where she would be among old friends for the coming rain dance. Hearing this, Father John generously offered a ride. They would leave one day and return the next. Surely, the nuns could spare Rita for that long.

  When the big day came, Dancing Quail was excited to be going home for the first time since she had moved to Topawa earlier that spring. She wore new clothes, which she had purchased from the trading post with her own money. She looked forward to seeing other girls her age, to being included as one of them.

  By now Dancing Quail had ridden in Father John’s touring car more than once. She was totally at ease. While Understanding Woman drowsed peacefully in the backseat, Rita chattered away in her much-improved English, pointing out the various sights along the way, telling Father John the Papago words for mountains and rocks, plants and animals, and reciting some of the traditional stories that went along with them.

  Father John had offered a ride, but he wasn’t pleased to be going to the rain dance, and he didn’t much like the stories, either. On a professional basis, he disapproved of the annual midsummer rain dances, thinking them little more than orgies where people got so drunk on ceremonial cactus wine that they vomited into the dirt. Ancestral Papago wisdom dictated this was necessary to summon back Cloud Man and Wind Man who brought with them summer rains, the lifeblood of the desert. Father John thought otherwise.

  When he first arrived on the reservation, the priest’s initial impulse had been to preach fiery sermons and forbid his parishioners’ attendance at the dances altogether, but Father Mark, his superior, had counseled otherwise. He said the church would be better served if Father John attended the various dances in person, putting in goodwill appearances at each. He advised the younger man to do what he could to keep his flock in line, but not to turn the dances into forbidden fruit. After all, Father Mark explained, forbidden or not, the Papagos would go anyway.

  Dutifully, Father John attended, but he didn’t think it did any good. He was beginning to realize that the Papagos were an exceedingly stubborn lot and almost totally impervious to the influence of outsiders. They listened politely enough. As succeeding waves of Anglo missionaries washed across their austere corner of the world, the Tohono O’othham accepted and incorporated some new ideas while blithely casting off the rest.

  Father John suspected that Papago acceptance of any external religion, his included, was only skin deep. The Bible with its Old and New Testaments got layered in among all the other traditional stories, ones about I’itoi and Elder Brother. In this regard, his young charge Rita was no different from the others. She listened attentively during weekly catechism sessions, answering questions dutifully and well, but he worried that just beneath the surface of Dancing Quail’s shiny Catholic veneer lurked an undisturbed bedrock of pagan beliefs.

  “What are you going to do at the dance?” he asked. At sixteen, Rita seemed much too young to sit in the circle and drink the cactus wine. He worried about that as well.

  She laughed and tossed her head. “I think I’ll find myself a husband. Did you know that during a rain dance the woman may choose? The rest of the time, the men do the choosing.”

  “I hope you choose well,” Father John said seriously.

  He had seen several instances of unwise choices. Young women with their newfound jobs and independence were finding partners for themselves rather than following the old ways and letting their families do the negotiating. As a result, there was a growing problem with out-of-wedlock pregnancies. In addition, there were more and more cases where young fathers simply walked away from familial responsibilities.

  “Maybe I’ll choose you,” Rita said with a mischievous smile.

  Father John flushed. Dancing Quail always laughed at him when his ears turned red like that.

  “I’ve already explained that to you,” he said seriously. “Priests don’t marry.”

  “But what about that new priest, the Pre…pre…” She stumbled over the long, unfamiliar word.

  “Presbyterian?” Father John supplied.

  “Yes. What about that new Reverend Hobson? He’s a priest with a wife and three children.”

  “He’s not a priest,” Father John explained. “He’s a pastor—a Protestant, not a Catholic. Pastors marry. Priests don’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rita said with a frown. “You’re all from the same tribe, aren’t you?”

  Father John had never before considered the issue in quite those terms. “Yes,” he answered. “Yes and no.”

  The first giant cactus, Hahshani, was a very strange thing. Growing up over the spot where Coyote had buried the little boy’s bones, he was tall and thick and soft, shooting straight up out of the ground until he finally sprouted arms.

  The people and animals were curious, and they all came to look at him. The children played around Hahshani and stuck sticks into him. This hurt Giant Cactus, so he put out long, sharp needles to keep them away. Then the children shot arrows into him. This made Hahshani very angry, so he sank into the ground and went away to a place where no one could find him.

  After Giant Cactus disappeared, the people were sorry and began looking for him. Finally Crow, who was flying over Giwho Tho’ag or Burden Basket Mountain, came back and told the people he had found the cactus hiding in a place where no animals ever went and where no people hunted.

  The people called a council. Afterward, the chief told the people to prepare four large baskets, then he told Crow to take the baskets and fly back to Hahshani. When Crow reached Giant Cactus, Hahshani was covered with red, juicy fruit. As the chief had directed. Crow loaded the fruit into the baskets and took it back to the people. Crow placed the fruit in ollas that were filled with water, and then the ollas were set on the fire, where they were kept boiling from sunrise to sunset.

  For four days, they cooked the fruit, and when it was finished, the chief told the people to prepare for a great wine feast. The people were puzzled because they had never tasted wine before. So all the people—Indians, animals, and birds—gathered around to drink the wine.

  At the feast, everyone drank so much that they began to do silly things. Grasshopper pulled off one of his legs and wore it as a headdress. Nighthawk saw this and laughed so hard that his mouth split wide open. Since then, Nighthawk is so embarrassed by his big mouth that he only flies at night. Some of the other birds were so drunk that they began fighting and pulling out each other’s feathers. That is why some of them still have bloody heads to this day.

  When the chief saw all this fighting, he decided that there would be no more wine feasts, so he carefully gathered up all the Giant Cactus seeds and gave them to a messenger to take far away. The people didn’t like this, so they sent Coyote after Messenger.

  Coyote asked Messenger to show him what was in his hand. Messenger said no, but Coyote begged for one little peck, and finally, after much coaxing, Messenger gave in. He opened his hand, just the slightest bit. As soon as he did, Coyote struck his hand, and the seeds of Hahshani flew far into the air.

  The wind was coming from the north. Wind caught Hahshani’s seeds and carried them up over the mountaintops, scattering them on the south sides of the mountains.

  And that is why, to this day, Giant Cactus grows only on the south sides of the mountains. And since then, every year, the people have held the feast of the cactus wine.


  The night was cooling fast. In the desert outside Sells, a coyote howled and was answered by a chorus of village dogs. It was a pleasant, peaceful sound that made both Papago men feel relaxed and at home.

  For some time, Looks At Nothing sat smoking the wiw, the wild tobacco, and saying nothing. Fat Crack admired the old man’s concentration and stubbornness. He had heard stories about how the injured Looks At Nothing, returning to the reservation from Ajo, had shunned the white mans’ ways, including alcohol and store-bought tobacco and cigarettes. The only alcohol the medicine man consumed was the cactus wine made once a year from fruit of the giant cactus. He smoked only the native tobacco, gathered from plants growing wild in the sandy washes. The single exception, his post-World War II Zippo lighter, was more a concession to old age than it was to the Mil-gahn.

  As the burning sticks of rolled tobacco moved back and forth between them, and as the smoke eddied away from them into the dark sky, Fat Crack could see why this particular tobacco smoke might still retain some of its ancient power.

  “What do you believe caused the accident?” Looks At Nothing asked at last.

  “A steer ran across the road in front of the truck,” Fat Crack answered. “When she tried to miss it, the tire caught on the shoulder and the truck rolled. That’s what Law and Order told me.”

  “That may be how the accident happened,” Looks At Nothing said, “but it’s not what caused it. Do you know this Anglo child Hejel Wi’ithag lives with, the one she calls Olhoni?”

  Fat Crack nodded. “Davy Ladd. His mother is a widow. Rita lives with them and looks after the boy. What about him?”

  “The boy is the real cause of your aunt’s accident.”

  “Davy Ladd? How? He’s only six. He was at the hospital. He sure wouldn’t hurt her. They say he saved her life.”

  Looks At Nothing’s cigarette glowed softly in the night. He passed it back to Fat Crack. “The boy is unbaptized. His mother was born a Catholic, but he himself has never been inside a church. Do you know the old priest from San Xavier?”