Dead Horses

by David Knop

  I waited. Far off, great horned owls hooted and answered. The night carried the whines of a bull elk bugling deep and resonant, then pitching to a high squeal, and ending in a sequence of grunts. The animal seemed as distant as the white peaks of the San Juans and as detached from me as the black sky punctured by countless stars.

  I waited as stars crept across the sky. To my disappointment, no headlights lit the road. So far, no feds to the rescue.

  Alone and hopeless, I started to feel sorry for myself. My headbutt to Lettau had caused an acorn-sized lump, so I rubbed my forehead to sooth it.

  Down on the road, the cruiser sputtered and stopped. Out of gas. I took it as proof Lettau had taken me far from civilization to kill me. Soon the cruiser’s lights would drain the battery and leave me to the high-country night and my sole distraction, a moon so brilliant its reflection off the snowy peaks made me blink.

  I wrapped myself in the blanket. The Milky Way, Earth Mother’s answer to the Las Vegas strip, reminded me again how cold alpine nights could be at ten thousand feet. A breeze strong enough to throw grit dropped the temperature and smelled of snow. Any plan to walk out died right there. Denver papers are full of people who died making that mistake.

  In my hillside hiding place, I shook from the cold and busied my throbbing head with details of Reel’s mission. She wanted to prevent violence at the hospital groundbreaking and I had identified a few of the players on both sides. Grizz ripped up both groups before I could ID the leaders. Not only had I failed at my task, somebody had wounded Walker, Grizz had mauled No Name, and set his sights on me. In the recesses of my mind, my old drill instructor bellowed, “You got a high casualty rate and shit to show for it.” My face, neck, and ears heated with embarrassment. If there was a way to duck out of this scene, I would have.

  Chapter 28

  Snow, moon-lit diamond dust, fell and muffled night sounds. A typical Colorado mountain summer night.

  “Time has come.”

  I jumped, swiveled, pulled the pistol from my belt. Only stars and shadowed pine met my eyes. I must be hearing things now.

  “You’re not hearing things.” The voice came from the nearby trees, but I saw nothing.

  “Come out or I’m coming after you,” I said, without the faintest idea of who I was dealing with.

  “Yawn. I’d dance circles around you.”

  “Nice talk. Tryin’ to scare me?” I asked.

  “I don’t need to try.” The voice came from the opposite direction. Close.

  I spun. Deer stood inches from my face. Antlers stretched beyond my field of vision on both sides. His large ears swiveled, listening everywhere, then faced me. The dark V on his forehead separated huge brown eyes. His nose twitched as he sniffed me.

  “Jesus, man,” I said, heart beating like a quarter horse at the finish line.

  Deer turned and bounded off, looked back, then disappeared in the tree line.

  “Hey, goddammit!”

  Deer returned in a heartbeat, said, “No need to get pissy.”

  “What do you want from me?” I asked. I held out my palms, pulled them back not sure Deer would understand the gesture.

  “Oso,” he said.

  “Oso Walker? No way. Reel wants him.”

  Deer shook his head, his antlers amplifying the movement into wide sweeps. “You owe him to me.”

  “Why?” Annoyance painted his eyes, so I said, “I damn near get killed by sheriff’s assassins, then by a car wreck. I get attacked by wolves—”

  Deer said, “Some things must be done.”

  “What?”

  “The wolves were required to get you near Oso,” Deer said, big-eyed.

  “I couldn’t just walk up to Oso, shake his hand, and say hello?”

  Deer recoiled, ready to sprint. “No one walks up to a skinwalker and shakes his hand.”

  “Those wolves bit the crap out of me.” My stitches tingled.

  Deer said, “Your need for medical care disguised the reason I wanted you there. He puffed up, as if enjoying it. “Right outside his place, too. I found it quite creative.”

  “You sent wolves after me? Jesus, how could you—”

  Deer pulled back. “Me? You killed two of them.”

  “Why am I even explaining this to you?”

  Deer said. “You’re boring me.” Snow layered on Deer’s back, giving him a ghostly appearance.

  “You want me to give up the only hard suspect I got?”

  Deer exhaled. “This isn’t about you.”

  This guy burned my ass. “Who the fuck’re you comin’ out of nowhere demanding’ my perp?”

  Deer raised up on his hind legs. His antlers atomized, then drifted away like pollen in the night. Ears, brown and long, shriveled to round, flat, and hairless. His black nose vanished, the white snouted face morphed to rounded and bronzed human features, front legs reshaped into arms, hind limbs straightened, hooves turned to hands and feet.

  Deer, no, not a deer. A man. The man stood before me dressed in finely-beaded leather with epaulets and a vest sporting red stars on a blue field. Crow wings adorned his dark hair. His furrowed, copper face attested to a life in the sun. Around his neck he wore a bird-bone choker accented with turquoise. A pendant with red feathers and white beads hung from his neck. A fox tail draped over one shoulder. In his left hand, he carried a carved horsehead staff, his right gripped what looked like tiny clusters of galaxies, constellations and stars. A small celestial body circled his hand.

  I gawked at the vision, speechless. Snowflakes drifted into my open mouth.

  “I’ve been following you since you found that dead horse,” he said.

  This man, at least one who looked like him, had stood in front of my house holding an AK-47. A few days later, I visited his office in Ignacio, looking for information on the horse killers. Clement Ouray Pokoh.

  “Ain’t you dead?” I asked.

  “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Call me Pokoh.”

  Pokoh, a spirit the Utes say created the world and formed every tribe out of the soil where they lived. The legend of Pokoh was not in my pueblo’s tradition, but that made him no less powerful. A man carrying stars in his hand commanded respect.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “I told you. Oso. Grizz. Ursus arctos horribilis.”

  “The man or animal?” I asked.

  Pokoh said, “Both the same. Oso is the skinwalker.”

  “Reel gets him, first.”

  “You owe him to me.” Pokoh eye-balled me while juggling his miniature constellations, waiting for me to absorb what he’d just said. The stars he held, billions of miles reduced to inches, twirled and flashed like a prize from the county fair.

  “See these?” he asked.

  “Hard to miss.” If juggling parts of the universe was meant to impress me, it did. I hoped Pokoh didn’t notice my knees shaking, hoped he didn’t hear my fat tongue.

  “Do you understand their origin?” He pointed upward.

  I shook my head. “Those real?” I asked, pointing at his shimmering hand.

  Pokoh lifted his eyes to the sky, looked self-satisfied doing it. “I placed them there, long ago. Hard work. Asteroids proved touchy, though.” He pointed to the glowing object circling his hand. “Asteroids are hard to control. Now I learned to direct them at will. Anywhere. Anytime. The right time.”

  I was in the presence of a powerful god who was working an agenda in the background. It was he, the man-deer-spirit, who’d connected me to Southern Colorado, the Utes, the Chivingtons, and Oso Walker. I didn’t even try to understand what he was planning.

  “So, it’s agreed?” he said, taking my expression as approval.

  I wanted to scream, No, I didn’t agree, but my lips wouldn’t move. Pokoh had not only read my mind, he’d entered it.

  “Follow,” he said. “You need to see thi
s.”

  I did without knowing why. Together we travelled, in a way I cannot describe. We flew through a place without reference, so I couldn’t judge direction, speed, or surroundings.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not far.”

  We came to a lake. The water was dark, impenetrable. Around it, pine grew tall in places, stunted in most.

  “Where are we?”

  “The Doorway of the Rainbow, Shipap.”

  My people originally came up from the ground through a large hole. But the hole in front of me was a lake edged by a steep rock outcrop on the far side. Shipap was located in a place now called Southern Colorado, the ancients say. I said to Pokoh, “Shipap is not Ute, not your world. Why are we here in mine?

  Pokoh laid out his palms, “I’m not the one in doubt.”

  We walked around the lake through fallen and shattered scree, then came to a huge boulder that Pokoh pushed aside with ease. The rock had covered a tunnel.

  “Follow me,” said Pokoh, the man-deer-spirit.

  We walked. I don’t know how far because darkness hid the length. We came to a bright place that looked like my pueblo, the old one I have seen only in history books: the paths, the buildings—some two and three stories—rocks, hills. Sun. No cars, no telephone poles.

  The dead. They were here. People I hadn’t seen in years. The Herreras, the Suinas, old man Trujillo. I’d been to their funerals. Even Ramon Chalan, a childhood buddy who’d died of polio. As kids, Chalan and I always managed to get into trouble.

  Over there, Ha’ro Velasquez, a paratrooper killed in ‘Nam, talked and laughed with a man who died in the Korean War. Some ancient ones who’d lived long before my time chatted near the kiva. Everyone went about their business. People talked. Kids ran and laughed. Everyone seemed content.

  I didn’t recognize some people. “Who?” I asked, pointing at young, fresh faces.

  “Those waiting to be born,” he said.

  “Here, now? Why?”

  “Time is an illusion. Everything that has ever been and ever will be is happening here. Now.”

  “When Grandfather told me these things, I didn’t understand. Still don’t,” I said.

  “No past. No future. Only now,” Pokoh said, looking around. “See for yourself.”

  I smiled at Rosendo Montoya, but he looked through me as if I were mist. Another man I’d known since I was a boy, Clofe Arquero, walked through me. I stood dumbfounded until Pokoh grabbed my arm and led me to Juan Pecos and his son, Jason, the men murdered at my pueblo. Their lifeless eyes looked directly at me.

  I greeted them. They remained wordless, motionless.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I asked.

  “They want to come here, but can’t,” Pokoh said.

  “Why not?”

  “They seek justice. They cannot reside here until they find it.” He stuck his chin up and out, folded his arms, said, “Until you find it.”

  So, there it was. Justice. At first, I had assumed this visit to Shipap was some sort of payback for the teen-aged tweeker I’d killed years ago back home, or that woman—a walking IED—back in Iraq. But now I understood it was more immediate than that. This wasn’t payment for what I’d done long ago. This was a chance to redeem the sins of my immediate past by excepting the responsibility for the deaths of people I was sworn to protect and serve.

  “I’ll find the killers of Juan and Jason Pecos. And “I’ll find Oso, too.” I said nothing about handing Oso over to him, then banished the thought hoping Pokoh could not read my face or mind.

  Pokoh smiled when he said, “But, be careful. Looking for a skinwalker carrying a grudge for over a hundred years can be risky. Bad blood between the Utes and Navajos goes way back. It came to a head when Utes helped Kit Carson end the Navajo’s way of life in their last stronghold, Canyon de Chelly. From there, they were marched to the swampy Basque Redondo on a brutal journey called the Long Walk. Hundreds died of starvation and exposure. The old and the sick. Children. Navajos are still furious. Can you blame them?”

  His eyes darted about when he said, “Shooting is inevitable at the hospital groundbreaking ceremony. When the first shovel digs into the ground, the trouble starts. Utes, and bystanders die. Chivingtons, too. Then the finger pointing starts and everybody blames everybody else until the Navajos end up holding the bag.

  The Navajo and Ute reservations shared a border, but I thought Pokoh might be exaggerating the threat. I sensed his desperation, though.

  “Why now?” I asked.

  Pokoh sighed, said, “The past always finds a way to haunt the present. People like the Chivingtons are still around looking for a chance to hate Indians and the groundbreaking is a good opportunity to take care of two tribes with one blow.”

  I’d experienced this kind of hate in the past, but I had hardened my heart against it. Combat duty in the Marine Corps put stiff armor around my emotions. War was business in the Marines, and I had earned my body armor. But, an attack on my people by outsiders who sought to use a 150-year-old massacre as an excuse to reward their hate was personal.

  I owed every one of my people who suffered and died from these cowardly acts, past, present, and future. I owed my people—all Indians—justice.

  I asked, “Okay, you brought me here to Shipap. Why? You’re a Ute. So is Oso. Why do you care so much about the Navajos?”

  “What harms one, harms all. It is time to end the feud.”

  I locked on Pokoh’s eyes as it struck me that my connection to the potential deaths was also a link to my heritage. We were all connected. I knew that. I just didn’t realize how much.

  Then, he disappeared. A blue light lingered, then faded away, leaving me alone to think.

  Everything went black.

  Chapter 29

  I awoke back on the mountainside. The high moon edged the pines with silver-blue, a color like the lake above Shipap. The snowy peaks fluoresced a brilliant white.

  The moon’s blue cast invoked memories of Grandfather. He knew the old ways and told me the color blue was a call to power. My mind ran with vague recollections of past supernatural events that had appeared then vanished like last night’s nightmare. Like my blue skin. I looked at the back of my hand and rolled up a sleeve to double check. No blue. My skin was colored normal except for the stitched bites from Wolf.

  Pacing helped me think. Pokoh had slipped something into the conversation, almost as an aside. The spirit made it a point to tell me he could control asteroids. Putting stars in the heavens was a monumental feat, and I could understand his pride. But he took the time to tell me about his power over those smaller celestial fragments hurtling through space to who-knows-where. Was he merely proud, or was his attention to the asteroids circling his wrist a threat?

  I shivered, but not from the cold. I was now in the middle of the Ute-Navajo feud.

  Pokoh, in the form of Deer, reappeared in a blue flash.

  “Jesus, man,” I jumped a foot. “Hey, you an’ me gotta talk.”

  His gleeful eyes, the first hint of humor I’d seen from him, focused behind me. “Have you found Grizz, yet?” asked the man-deer-spirit, chin-pointing to something behind me. “No need.” He bounded off.

  I whirled. Grizz stood not twenty yards away drooling, crouching cat-like, closing-in on snow-muffled paws.

  I broke downhill for Lettau’s Ford Interceptor. Grizz snapped at my heels, snagged my pants leg with a claw and jerked me off balance. Airborne, I expected life’s end to come fast. The bottom of the hill arrived faster with a lung-busting thud on the road. Grizz, hot on my heels, crashed on the pavement next to me so hard the impact made me shudder.

  Jumping up, I fished through my jeans and found the Ford’s key fob and thanked the gods as the doors unlocked. I jumped into the police car and used the fob to lock all the doors. Sucking air, I checked the rearview. Outside, Grizz sat up, stared off at the snowy peaks, dazed from the fall.

 
; The starter responded with a click when I twisted the key. There had been enough juice to operate the locks, but not enough battery to start the engine. I had become a victim of my own plan to run the gas and batteries down. Fortunately, the cruiser faced downhill, so gravity was on my side, at least. With a shift into neutral, the Ford rolled.

  Not too soon, either. Grizz eyeballed me, shook his body like a wet dog, then ambled my way. Making five miles an hour, I muscled the cruiser around a curve just as Grizz broke into a trot. His front leg hinted at a limp, but Grizz could outrun a horse, limp or no limp.

  By the time the road straightened out, Grizz had worked into a lope, trailing me by twenty yards. He seemed stronger, all claws, jaws, and fangs, while my prospects for survival had turned weaker.

  Another turn in the road and Grizz was ten yards closer, bigger, crazier. His rapid breathing beat inside the cruiser. My foot instinctively pumped the gas, but stomping the accelerator returned nothing from the dead engine. Grizz gained distance, claws clicking on the blacktop, pads thumping like a boxer’s heavy bag. The bear swiped at the rear bumper, missed, then stumbled and fell on his face. Curves sharpened into hairpins. With one eye on the two-lane, another on the rearview, road and abyss blurred as the paw footfalls grew louder.

  Scraping the length of a side rail robbed the SUV of speed. Grizz closed again, swatted at the vehicle’s rear, the shock so forceful, I had to oversteer to keep on the road. Part of the bumper dragged along behind me. In the mirror, bumper parts littered the highway.

  The SUV rolled down the mountain at twenty, but now Grizz cantered alongside, tongue slapping his jaw, eyes wide and red. He wheezed but seemed strong .

  With no power-steering, I hugged the two-lane’s high side with all my strength. Steering into the next hairpin, a VW-sized boulder sat in the right lane, the product of a landslide. I swerved, scraping metal on the stone bank to my left. I avoided most of the smaller rocks, crashed over others with the skid plate.

  Grizz slammed into the Ford like a locomotive, pushing it sideways, stopping it in its tracks, up against the roadside cut. A huge paw smashed the rear passenger window. The beast rammed again, clawed at the rear door until it opened, then tore it off with a swipe, sending a wrenching jolt through the SUV.