The deputy’s fingers tightened on the telephone; he lowered his voice to barely above a whisper. “Did you speak to the—uh—person whom you assumed to be the missing youngster?”
“Damn right we did!” “Buddy” Bigbee went on to describe the high points of his encounter with Sarah Frank, capping it off with: “The kid said she wanted to buy my horse—and acted like she had the cash to do it.” He effected a dramatic pause, then dropped the bomb that almost blew the deputy out of his chair: “And we even know where she’s headed.”
The outer office was silent as a Sunday morn following a deep snowfall. Deputy Packard felt Bearcat’s gaze stinging the back of his neck. “And where would that be?”
“Kid told us she was going to see her Aunt Daisy—and I did me some checkin’ around and found out there’s a Daisy Perika on the Southern Ute res. And according to the TV, the runaway kid’s half Ute.” The wily rancher cleared his throat. “Now do me and Tillie get the re-ward or don’t we?”
The deputy forced a tone that suggested a bored disinterest. “I’ll keep a record of your call, sir—just in case something develops from it.” He produced an artificial sigh. “But you might as well know—we’ve had a few hundred reports of girls—several of ’em with cats. They all more or less match the description of Miss Frank, and several of ’em are a lot closer than yours. It’ll naturally take quite a lot of time to check out every call, but if the girl you encountered should turn out to be the one we’re looking for, you’ll certainly be notified.”
The caller was more than disappointed; he was downright melancholy. When the Colorado rancher responded, he sounded like another, much older man—who was destined to cash in his chips without ever making the big score. “Well, I s’pose she might’ve been just some ordinary kid with a black-and-white cat.” Mr. Bigbee’s sigh was the genuine article, his question hopeful. “I s’pose you want my phone number.”
“Certainly, sir.” Deputy Packard closed his eyes while “Buddy” Bigbee named the nine digits that had already been captured on the caller ID. “Thank you. If anything comes of this, we’ll be in touch with—”
“Oh, now that you mention it, I almost forgot something. Might be important.”
“Yes sir?”
“The cat had a funny name. Kid called it ‘Zig-Zag.’”
Packard clenched his teeth. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s about it.”
As he was hanging up, Packard heard Bearcat’s heavy footsteps approaching, quickly pressed the CLEAR button to wipe the caller’s telephone number off the screen.
The massive deputy looked over the small one’s shoulder, sucked up a noisy slurp of hot chocolate. “Had any decent leads?”
Packard snorted. “Don’t I wish.” He pushed himself erect, effected a stretch. “But what really frosts me is I took most of that last call on your shift.” He grinned at his huge partner, pointed at the still-warm chair. “You owe me two minutes.”
Bearcat grinned back. “You owe me two bits.”
Packard flipped the Choctaw a shiny Oklahoma quarter.
Marilee Attatochee’s supper of baked beans and fat-free turkey wieners was interrupted when the telephone rang. “Yeah?”
“Hi, Marilee. This is Deputy Packard and I—”
“Is this about Sarah?” Oh, God—please don’t let her be dead.
“Uh, in a way. I just need some routine information.”
“What?” She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.
“Does Sarah have any birthmarks?”
“No. Not that I know of.” She was tapping her foot on the floor. “Anything else?”
“Uh, just one more thing—does her cat have a name?”
“Sure.” What a dipstick. “All pet cats have names.”
The deputy waited a few heartbeats, then realized she was going to make him ask. “Well, it might help if you happened to remember—”
“Sarah calls him Mr. Zig-Zag.”
“Oh.” That cinches it. The kid is on her way to the Southern Ute res in Colorado. To see a Daisy Perika. “Thanks, Marilee. That’s all I needed to know.” The vacuum-like silence pulled a few final words from his mouth. “Just fillin’ in some blanks on the forms.”
“Tate, if you hear any news at all—” The Papago woman was talking to a dead line.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Memories
Years ago when she had first come to visit Aunt Daisy, The bumpy ride along the rutted dirt lane had been a delightful adventure, and it had not seemed like such a long way—the sparse forests of juniper and piñon had fairly flown by the truck window. That smaller, earlier version of Sarah Frank would walk only the few paces from Charlie Moon’s parked pickup to the squeaky-creaky steps of a wooden porch attached to the Ute tribal elder’s trailer home.
Now, as the fourteen-year-old trudged along on the lonely road, gnarled trees stood like sullen sentries, staring suspiciously, whispering breezily among themselves about the unwelcome stranger in their midst. The familiar forms of the Three Sisters were oh, so far away—practically on the other side of the world! And no matter how fast she walked, the petrified Pueblo women on the distant, misty mesa seemed to get no closer. Worse still, the sun—glowing a dull cherry-red behind wind-carried dust—was sinking behind the distant mountains, preparing to settle in for a long night. Me and Mr. Zig-Zag will be all right. She jutted her chin. There’s nothing in the dark to be afraid of…
But that, of course, was a lie.
Sarah’s thoughts drifted off to memories of her aged Papago grandmother, who would brighten early evening twilight by telling hoary old tales about how the Rattlesnake People slithered up from Mexico on their bellies, how Jackrabbit stole seed corn from the Pima, or how (and this one always chilled Sarah’s blood) Trickster Coyote lured a little Papago girl into the brush and ate her for supper! Granny would spin these lurid yarns while coiling cunningly crafted baskets from such meager resources as were available in the bone-dry Sonoran solitude. The hues the Papago elder used were of the desert. For white, Grandmother would tediously split-stitch sun-bleached yucca stalk fibers over a grayish-brown bear grass filler. When the self-reliant artist required black, she would harvest fibers from the sinister-looking seedpod of devil’s claw—and for red she spilled yucca-root blood! And every example of the old woman’s craft featured a special image—a horned toad, a stroke of dry lightning, a claret cup blossom. Each of these archetypal forms suggested something mysterious and magical, but those secrets had not been shared with the half-Ute girl.
Every season, the old woman would use new baskets for the gathering. In late June, they would walk miles along the shallow Jojoba Arroyo to an isolated stand of saguaro cactus, where Grandmother would use a long stick to knock the pungent fruits off the pinnacles of the towering plants. When the season was right, they would gather agave leaves (but only from the north side of the plant) or mesquite beans. Whatever the task, after the long day’s work, the walk home with the loaded baskets always seemed twice as far as the morning’s joyful journey. When little Sarah lagged behind, Grandmother would bark good-naturedly at her: “Step-step-step. Keep on putting one foot in front of the other. Do that, child—and you can take yourself anywhere!” And so Sarah had.
And so she did.
Sniffing the Nostalgia Blossom
Having prepared a bubbling pot of green chili stew (with extra-generous measures of beef and potatoes) Daisy Perika ladled out a modest helping and seated herself at the kitchen table. The aroma rising up from the greasy, brownish broth was deliciously tantalizing. She rolled a buttered flour tortilla into a narrow cylinder, dipped her tablespoon into the brew. But as she consumed her meal, Daisy barely tasted it. I wonder where Sarah is right this minute? Probably in southern Arizona, she thought—hiding amongst her peculiar Papago relatives, whose brains (in the Ute elder’s opinion) were probably almost useless after all those years of baking in the sun. Was it actually possible that Provo Frank’s daughter could
have killed a man—just because he’d caught her stealing something in his house? Well, of course it was. For one thing, Sarah was half Papago, wasn’t she? And even if the girl was a full-blooded Ute, our children today aren’t like we was when we were their age. When I was a little girl, we respected grownups and did what we were told. But now the young people talk back to the elders, even laugh at them—right to their faces! And they watch all those shoot-’em-ups on the television. But worst of all, they pop pills like we used to eat peppermint and licorice sticks. As she pondered these dreadful changes in her world, the hot stew was transformed to merely warm, then tepid, and the old woman’s heart grew cold. Daisy took a final spoonful, made an ugly face, pushed the bowl aside. I don’t seem to be able to make that stuff as good as I used to.
The Trickster
Knowing that Darkness was creeping up behind her, busily sweeping away what was left of day, Sarah Frank didn’t dare glance over her shoulder. The child kept her gaze fixed on the uncertain path ahead. Mr. Zig-Zag trotted along like the free spirit he was, occasionally pausing to sniff at a tender sprig of rabbit bush or slash a paw at a passing moth. As the first wave of dusk rolled over them, hurried on ahead to shroud mesas and canyons in a dusky cloak, the girl heard the first mutterings of a nameless dread. Fear spoke to her not by means of words; the sinister syllables were tingly skin-prickles, shivery shudders, a sour lump in the stomach. She translated: Nobody but Aunt Daisy lives out here. And I don’t know how far it is to her trailer. It might be around that next bend or behind that big ridge or—what if I took the wrong dirt road and I’m going…nowhere. Nowhere was not where she wanted to go, but it was too late to turn back. She called up optimistic thoughts: Even if I took a wrong turn, it’s not necessarily all that bad. I’ve got food in my backpack, and a Pepsi, and a little blanket. Me and Mr. Zig-Zag could find a place to sleep until morning. Despite the fact that spring was fading into summer, she knew it would be a long, cold night. Uncomfortable, certainly. But it’s not like we might get hurt by something. The frail little girl tried to push the thought of several potential somethings out of her mind. Like rattlesnakes. A freckle-faced boy at school had told a horrid tale about how, in search of precious warmth, these deadly vipers would wriggle into a sleeping person’s bedroll, snuggle up to them—and fang them as soon as they moved! According to this same authority, there was nothing that hurt so bad as a rattlesnake bite. She also refused to consider tawny mountain lions that would snatch up spotted cats (and children!) by the neck, drag them off somewhere and eat them alive. Hadn’t that nice little Mormon boy over by Mossy Butte been killed and eaten by a cougar? There were other somethings she also refused to think about, such as black bears and stinging scorpions and scuttling centipedes and huge, hairy-legged tarantulas and—
Up there, hanging on the edge of a small bluff, she saw a horrid, twisted cottonwood. It was the tree Daisy called Old Ugly. “It’s all right, Mr. Zig-Zag, we’re on the right road. Everything’s going to be fine.” The cat did not reply, but the girl heard something that made her heart leap, and miss a beat. What was that?
Whatever it was, there it was again.
A dry, scuffing sound in the bushes.
The girl stopped, stood still as one of the dead junipers.
Mr. Zig-Zag instantly self-petrified, a front paw frozen in midstep.
Sarah blinked at her pet—all she could see were his white spots. By the fractured magic of twilight, he had become a jigsaw-puzzle cat, missing half his pieces.
While both human and feline barely breathed, Sarah whispered to her pet. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.” And so, picking up their pace, they started once again.
Almost immediately, there were light, padding sounds off the edge of the dirt lane.
When Sarah stopped, the movement in the mesquite also paused.
Could it be an echo? No.
When she resumed her walk, the unseen creature resumed the stalk.
Darting looks at the brush, the cat mewed a pitiful whine.
She tried to sound brave. “Don’t worry, Mr. Zig-Zag, it’s probably nothing.”
But it was definitely not nothing and Mr. Zig-Zag certainly did worry. He kept himself as close as possible to the girl, brushing against her legs as she hurried along.
And then—the frightful sounds ceased.
Sarah forced a hollow little laugh. “See, I told you not to worry. It was probably just a silly old raccoon.”
It was not. And like so many evils that we would wish away, it had not departed.
A woolly-black cloud drifted off the face of the moon; now there was light to illuminate the threat.
The gaunt figure appeared in the center of the lane, perhaps a dozen paces ahead. Toothy mouth open, tongue lolling.
Mr. Zig-Zag arched his back, hissed like a punctured tire.
Sarah saw the hungry look on the coyote’s face, understood what he wanted. “No!” she snapped, and snatched up her cat. The girl unslung her backpack, stuffed the terrified animal inside. On this occasion, the creature did not resist. But once the pack was back on her back, Mr. Z-Z popped his head up to look over her shoulder. And hissed again. This time, with more confidence.
The coyote stared at the skinny child. Licked his black lips.
The Ute-Papago girl stared back. “Go-way!”
The coyote took a couple of ambling steps forward. Grinned wolfishly at his intended victims.
“Aunt Daisy’s house is down this road,” she said. “And that’s where me and Mr. Zig-Zag are going.”
Mr. Coyote took another step. Bared his teeth.
To Sarah, the carnivore’s message could not have been more plain if he had been speaking perfect English. He’s telling me to give him Mr. Zig-Zag. Then I can pass. Such an outrageous proposal was beyond consideration; it was insulting. The girl picked up a knotty little branch that had fallen off the tree called Old Ugly. It was reassuringly heavy in her hands.
She stood eye-to-eye with the coyote. The canine made no sound, but his eyes spoke eloquently. I don’t believe you’ll stand and fight. You are bluffing.
Sarah understood her precarious position. I can’t run, he’d catch me and pull me down. And I can’t just stand here, hoping he’ll go away. This left but a single option, and it was one that must be exercised immediately. With an ear-splitting shriek, she raised the stick over her head—charged the coyote!
The predator was so startled by the unexpected attack that before he managed a swerving retreat, Sarah landed a stinging blow across his neck, another on his hindquarters. As the animal disappeared into the brush, the child was startled to hear a long, piercing war cry, followed by a shouted taunt at the defeated enemy—which was delivered in a volatile mixture of Papago, Ute, and English. It was, of course, her own voice.
Barely a mile away, Daisy Perika was washing up some supper things while listening to Mule Skinner Blues on KSUT tribal radio. As usual, Daisy was no mere spectator—she was deep into the spirit of the thing, tapping her heel, bellowing for Little Water Boy to bring his buck-buck-bucket round—and if he didn’t like his job he could dang well fling his bucket down. “Eee-haaa!” she screeched, and flung a soapy saucepan across the kitchen, where it banged against the stone fireplace chimney with a resounding WHANG!
Because such conduct on the part of a tribal elder might suggest a childish impetuosity bordering dangerously near unseemly behavior, a few words of clarification are deemed necessary. Here they are: Though the Ute song-stylist admittedly preferred the lively 1960s Fendermen version of the ballad to the venerable Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel #8,” Daisy’s raucous screech and flippant tossing of metal cookware did not reflect an intent on her part to enhance the Singing Brakeman’s composition—her boisterous contribution was an involuntary innovation. Which calls for a physiological explanation. Here it is: The enthusiastic ad-lib occurred because the flexor carpi radialis and pronator radii teres muscles in her left forearm went into a sudden spasm. Much more could be said about
the various nerve fibers and their connections to muscles and the central nervous system, but the explanation provided is considered sufficient.
While rubbing the tingling left elbow, Daisy cocked her head. What was that yelping?
(No, she does not refer to her own yelping—the tribal elder is elderly, but not senile. What Daisy’s thought alludes to is the coyote-chasing girl’s war-whoop, though she does not realize that Sarah is the whooper in question, or even that the girl was chasing a coyote.)
Daisy had not heard Sarah’s shout with her ears, but the shaman was gifted with seven other ways of sensing startling events. Number five (not her favorite) was initiated when Daisy’s elbow flashed red-hot, her arm jerked with an unpleasant sensation identical to an electric shock—and the alarming sound appeared in her mind.
Sarah Frank stepped smartly along, the rising full moon at her back, Mr. Zig-Zag securely in her backpack, the sturdy stick in her hand. The skinny girl was no longer weary. She was, in fact, fairly bursting at the seams with pent-up energy—enough to run all night, chasing the cowardly coyote over rocky ridges, through patches of brush, down into deep arroyos—all the while shouting insults and threats. Exultant in her newfound powers, she promised herself that from this time forward, she would never, ever be afraid. Not of anything.
Bless her soul. The valiant little girl had not the least notion of the terrors awaiting her. The first (and least) of them was only sixteen seconds away, when she turned off the rutted dirt road into what passed for a driveway. She followed the almost invisible pair of tire tracks through the small forest of piñon and juniper, into the clearing.
There was no trailer house.
It was as if Daisy Perika’s familiar home had been snatched away, the old woman with it. The venerable Airstream had been replaced by a solid-looking little house, constructed mostly of stones, and wearing a cocky pitched-roof hat that glistened brittle in the moonlight.
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