Longarm nodded. "So I've been told. Yet others say all them strangers have moved in among them long-deserted cliff dwellings and seem to be guarding them from all corners. I'd sure like to know why. You say you had some riding stock to show me?"

The Indian rose from the table. "We have many fine ponies, many. Come.

I will show you and you can have your pick. But I don't think you will find anyone over in those canyons you just spoke of. Not anyone alive.

In our Shining Times, some of our hunters entered those dry canyons to see what might be there. Some came out excited, to say they had seen chindi! Others never came out at all. The shades of dead people can be cruel, and a lot of people must have died when all those old empty ruins were still young!"

Chapter 3.

Longarm rode out of the Dulce Agency just before sundown. He didn't see any Indians. That didn't mean a hundred or more pairs of dark sloe eyes weren't watching his every move, So whether it would be pa.s.sed on or not, Longarm moved westward along the railroad tracks, as if headed on toward Durango for whatever white-eyed reason.

He was riding a black-and-white paint and leading a buckskin, seated astride a double-rigged roping saddle made by the Mullers. His denim duds, like his borrowed saddle, were meant to pa.s.s him off at any distance as a cowhand riding to or from some outfit not too far away.

Most riders north of, say, Santa Fe telescoped hats of any color the same way because it would take a fancy Mexican chin strap to keep a high-crowned hat on when the mountain winds got frisky all of a sudden.

Longarm had felt no call to change his sepia Stetson, which was overdue for some steaming and blocking in any case.

Despite the fool descriptions of him printed by reporter Crawford in the Denver Post, and despite the likelihood a lawman of some rep might be heading toward his real destination, Longarm knew lots of old cowhands sat tall in the saddle with a heavy mustache, and even more wore a double-action Colt on their left hip, cross-draw with the tailored hardwood grips forward, loaded with the same S&W .44-40 rounds as the Winchester '73 booted to the off side of the roping saddle. He had iron rations for maybe three days on the trail packed hidden in the bedroll and personal saddlebags he'd lashed to the roping saddle's cordovan skirts. For when strangers rode by packing lots of trail supplies, a body could get curious as to just how far they'd come or how far they meant to go.

He'd left the well-broken-in manila throw-rope buckled to the off swell to add to the picture, since far more cowhands than lawmen rode as if they might be chasing cows.

It was an even-money bet he was wasting time and effort as he rode on into the golden sunset with the mountains he meant to ride over rising blood-red behind him in the lavender eastern sky. For it was one thing to swear a Jicarilla police sergeant to secrecy, and another to a.s.sume neither he nor his moon-faced wife would confide a bit to their own kith and kin.

But half a chance was better than none and well worth the taking when it wasn't costing more than a couple of extra hours on a cool clear-weather trail through pleasant scenery.

Though the glowing light made it tougher to make out all the details, he could still see why the Jicarilla might not want to leave for any uncertain surroundings to the south. That fool report he'd read back in Denver said the BIA wanted to move the Jicarilla for their own good.

The government was always moving Indians somewhere else as a way to improve their condition, and the Cherokee were still cussing Andrew Jackson for it after all these years. The report on the Jicarilla failed to mention the New Mexican cattle interests who'd cussed poor U. S.

Grant for setting aside all this mountain greenery for Apache rascals who'd fought the New Mexico militia to a draw. Both Anglo and Mexican settlers had been fuming and fussing over all that swell range being wasted on fool Indians who didn't know how you made real money on marginal range and semi-arid woodlands. The scenery along the way was too pretty for high country being managed for real money.

He was well out of sight from the Dulce Agency when he turned in the saddle to see a big fat star winking down at him from a purple sky. He kept riding away from it as he recited to his ponies:

"Star light, star bright, Same star I saw last night. Wish I may, wish I might, See a different star some night."

Then he swung south, away from the track, saying aloud, "We'll see where this shallow dry wash leads us by moonrise. Ought to be able to circle Dulce and make her up around the eagle nests without too many Jicarilla spotting us in the moonlight. They don't find moonlight as romantic as us white eyes. They won't even go raiding after dark before they work up a powerful medicine against the evil eyes most folks call stars."

Longarm had more than one good reason to follow the southward-trending wash as darkness fell all around. The broad sandy bottom was easier for his eyes to make out, even as the steep, brush-rimmed banks on either side screened anyone moving along it. Best of all, since the snakes preferred twilight time for supper, neither the critters they hunted nor the diamondbacks themselves had any call to be scampering about in the open with two full-grown ponies crunching sand their way. High Apacheria got too cold for a sand-loving sidewinder on many a night, and the critters only bred where they could make it through the whole year.

Longarm figured they'd worked at least three miles south of the Dulce Agency when the big full moon popped up from behind the crags to the east as orange as a pumpkin ready for pie. So the next time they crossed a deer trail headed the right way, he reined in, changed mounts, and took it.

There was much to be said for mankind's way of laying trails the way men wanted to go and to h.e.l.l with a few dips or rises. But riding a strange mount in unfamiliar territory, Longarm preferred to work his way along trails laid out by other four-legged critters. Deer, being in less of a hurry and having no call to work harder than they needed to, tended to wind along contour lines a man would have a tough time following even in better light. So neither pony gave him any trouble as they wound their way ever eastward with the light improving as the rising moon got whiter while appearing to be getting smaller. Longarm had won cow camp bets on that optical illusion. You proved your point by aiming at the moon, high and low, with a calibrated gunsight. It still looked all wrong, but measurement was measurement.

The Continental Divide wasn't always where the mountains rose highest.

The uncertain dotted line on the map indicated where the falling rain wound up running down to sea level one way or the other. So while Longarm had to get over the official Continental Divide, it wasn't nearly as high in these parts as in the Sangre de Cristos on the far side of the upper Rio Grande. Geology courses wouldn't take four years if this old earth had been stuck together simply.

They still had some climbing to do before midnight and, deer not really caring which way the rivers might flow to the seas, they had to cut straighter and steeper as the rises got more serious. Few of the scattered crags and none of the pa.s.ses rose above the timberline in this stretch of the Divide, but the juniper and pine thinned out to where the moonlight lit up plenty of open shortgra.s.s, and Longarm was pleased to see they were making good time, considering he was riding strange ridges with no map but the more familiar stars up yonder.

It was a shame, or a blessing, that the folks called Apache had never yet learned to eat fish or admire stars. For mountain trout stuffed with onion-flavored blue-eyed gra.s.s and baked in 'dobe on the coals were fit to serve Queen Victoria, while the stars at this alt.i.tude made the black velvet sky seem spattered with diamond dust, at least where bigger fireflies weren't winking their a.s.ses down at you. It sure beat all how every nation seemed to pick some d.a.m.ned harmless thing to worry about.

p.a.w.nee just loved to stare up at the sky at night, and thought all the stars had names and medicines for anyone smart enough to ask the right star the right way. Most Indians looked at the stars the same as most whites. So why in thunder did the notorious night raiders of the Na-dene persuasion think moonlit or even starlit nights were so unlucky?

A couple of furlongs on a big fat star near the skyline winked out on him, and he reined in to reach thoughtfully for his saddle gun before he decided aloud, "Rocky outcrop on the next ridge. Ask a foolish question and Mother Nature just might answer. Of course you'd worry about stars giving your position away if you were running a ridge in search of harmful fun. But did the medicine men make up cautionary tales about evil stars just to make sure their young men raided on really overcast evenings?"

Mother Nature didn't answer. So he set the question aside, not being a fool Indian who had to worry about it. As gents reputed to delight in blood and slaughter--or maybe because they did study war so much--Na-dene speakers sure gave themselves a lot of things to worry about. Like the unrelated Cheyenne, the so-called Apache seemed to have a horror of death all out of proportion to their delight in dishing it out. n.o.body mutilated fallen enemies worse than those two nations, because n.o.body was as worried about their victims coming back from the dead. Longarm could see a certain logic in the otherwise spiteful practice of maiming and laming a fallen enemy after you'd killed him deader than a t.u.r.d in a milk bucket. The Cheyenne admired cut-off bow or trigger fingers, while the Apache went for the eyes and feet. They called ghosts of any dead folks chindi, and just hated it when they met a chindi with its eyes and feet intact. For there was no way to kill somebody a second time, and how did you outrun or dodge a spook when it had its full power to play hide-and-seek with a poor mortal?

Longarm figured he'd made it over the Divide when they came on a streamlet purling toward the east in the moonlight. He reined in and let the ponies water themselves as he swapped saddles again. Then he took off his hat and belly-flopped in the stream-side sedge to water himself just upstream. Nothing from a canteen or even a pump ever tasted half that refreshing. He'd heard of a spring back East, maybe in York State, where they bottled the water and sold it to rich folk in the cities like it was beer, for Gawd's sake. The odd notion made a tad more sense as he sipped such fine water after a spell of canteen water on the trail.

He sat up but didn't rise, seeing the Indian ponies were ground-rein-trained and seemed to be enjoying that lush sedge along the stream so much. He plucked a juicy green stem to chew. It tasted all right, but he felt he'd enjoy a smoke better. So he felt for a cheroot and his waterproof Mex matches as he sat up straighter, with the intent of lighting up before they moved on.

But he never did. Striking a match after dark in Apache country had been known to take years off a man's life, even when there wasn't somebody singing soft and sad in the middle distance!

Longarm put the cheroot and matches away as he eased to his feet, moved over to the ponies, and slid the Winchester out of its saddle boot.

There was already a round in the chamber, adding up to sixteen if you counted the regular magazine load of fifteen. A Winchester '73 cranked sort of noisy, and that first vital round could ride fairly safe in the chamber with the hammer eased down to half-c.o.c.k. He knew a pony trained not to drag its grounded reins could only be relied on to a point. So he quietly led the pair of them back upslope to a pine they'd pa.s.sed earlier, and made certain neither would run off when or if it got noisier in these parts. Then he took a deep breath and c.o.c.ked the hammer of his saddle gun all the way back as he eased in the general direction of that eerie singsong chant.

A friendly Na-dene singer he'd had fun with during a spell of ceremonial drumming had tried to explain the difference between the different "ways," or what he pictured as Indian psalms. But when you didn't savvy the lingo and the chanters only seemed to know one tune, they tended to sound a lot alike as well as sort of tedious. A Chinese gal he'd befriended out Frisco way had informed him just as certainly that she'd be switched with snakes if she could hear any difference between "Dixie"

and "Marching Through Georgia." So it was likely all in the way your ears had been brought up.

He worked close enough to get a surer line on the direction that sad singing was coming from. It sounded like a gal, and she seemed to be sounding off in a spooky way, in that inky patch of juniper or whatever growing between two ma.s.sive moonlit boulders. He felt no more desire to call out to her than he might have had moving in on any blind alley in Ciudad Juarez. He'd read about this place where cruel-hearted gals called Sirens called out to pa.s.sing strangers just to get them in an awful fix. So he had a better notion, and crabbed sideways to ease in on one blank wall of moonlit granite instead of sticking his paw smack in the bait pan. There was no practical way to scale the slightly sloping rock quietly with his Winchester. But that was one other good reason for packing a side arm. He placed his Winchester against the clean bare rock and, leaving his six-gun holstered, he took a deep breath and went mountain-climbing.

He could hear the singing better as he sc.r.a.ped his denim-clad belly over the top. The words didn't make a lick more sense to him, of course.

But the gal singing alone down there--he hoped she was alone--sure sounded hopeless and resigned as he slithered forward to peer over the edge at her.

He could see she stood alone, her hands up as if she was holding herself erect by gripping a sapling to either side. Longarm recalled the notorious Arapaho solution to caring for sick or elderly kin. He wasn't sure the Na-dene made a habit of abandoning old ladies to die of starvation if the wolves failed to get them first. It sure looked as if the poor old gal had been left all alone down there by somebody.

He let himself back down the outside surface, partly to give a white man on a mission time to think. He knew he'd never been sent all this way to play nursemaid to some sick old Jicarilla asdza her own medicine man had given up on. Such medicine men weren't all just rattles and dust-puffing. They cured sick Na-dene at least as often BIA surgeons did, and it sounded as if the old gal was resigned to becoming a chindi in the mighty near future. So there was no sensible reason for him to act like some fool Samaritan.

Then he had both feet on the ground. So he called himself a fool, picked up his carbine, and moved around to enter the cleft, trying to sound soothing, the way you talked to a critter, as he called out, "It's out of my way, ma'am. But I got a spare pony you can ride as I get you back to Dulce for some proper attention."

Then he almost shot the ghostly apparition staring at him with big black hollows as she pranced like h.e.l.l, both arms held high and shouted, "S's'suhah, Litcaiga Haltchin!"

But Longarm only half believed in chindis, so he struck a wax-stemmed match and saw that what he'd been looking at was a stark naked gal, smeared with clay and wood ash, with a wrist tied to a springy aspen sapling to either side of her as she did a sort of barefoot Irish jig on a good-sized ants' nest. She must have seen what he was by the same flickering light, for she hissed in English, "Put the light out before they see it and you find yourself in the same sort of trouble!"

Longarm shook the match out and reached in his jeans for his penknife as he moved closer, warning, "Try not to bust the crust of the ant pile any more if you can, ma'am. I know the feeling. I've been nipped by red vinegar ants. But they only bite more if you rile them up."

He was sure she was cussing him sarcastically as he got to work on the rawhide thongs binding her wrists. He said soothingly, "Step atop my toes whilst I free you. The little b.u.g.g.e.rs can't quite bite through that much leather, ma'am."

The naked Indian lady followed his suggestion, getting white ash all over the front of his denim as she plastered her naked body to his, a bare instep across each of his stout cavalry stovepipes. He wasn't sure he wanted to feel that way about a gal that spooky-looking. But he'd told her to do it. So he could only be a sport and cut both wrists free, even though she grabbed him like a long-lost lover with the first arm he got loose.

Then she was hugging him with both arms, and legs, as he backed off the ant pile with her, saying, "I got some aloe lotion amongst my possibles.

Lucky for us both, red ants don't act as wild after dark as they can in daylight."

But she didn't seem to be listening. She'd already unwrapped her ash-plastered form from his to run bare-a.s.s down the slope and belly-flop in that whitewater rill. The water was only inches deep and maybe a foot across. But she still managed a heap of splashing as she wallowed like an overheated pig set free in a mud puddle. She was already tougher to make out in the moonlight as she washed all that ash and clay from her saddle brown naked skin.

Longarm knew that, unlike true desert Indians such as Pima or the Paiute, some called Diggers, Na-dene set more store in modest dress. So while she dunked herself in ice water from head to toe, he went over to the tethered ponies to break a Hudson Bay blanket out of his bedroll and a lead-foil tube of aloe-and-zinc ointment from a saddlebag. As he ambled back to the naked asdza sitting upright in the rill with the moonlight glinting off her wet hair and hide, he told her, "You'd best get out and wrap yourself in this blanket before you catch cold, ma'am.

I got some salve here I packed in case of burns. It ought to sooth them ant bites some." She said she'd been stomping like that to kill as many of the red vinegar ants as she could while they were bedded down for the night inside that big mound. He didn't ask why. She allowed she had managed to get her bare feet and ankles nipped enough to matter. So he helped her out of the rill, wrapped her in the blanket, and sat her on the gra.s.sy slope to hunker down and rub salve all over her nether extremities as she told him her sad story. She said her name was Kinipai and that her maternal uncle had been a powerful hitali, or medicine man. She swore four times she'd never lain with her own uncle, making it so, unless she was risking the wrath of all the spirits and holy ones by lying four times. When she said four times that neither she nor her uncle had even robbed the dead, he began to follow her drift.

He'd been told by others that incest and grave-robbing were the first steps to bahagi'ite, or witchcraft. Kinipai went on to explain how she'd been the victim of what a white man of the cloth might have called "a theological dispute." Her uncle had taught her many "ways" or chants before he'd been struck dead by a diamondback he was chanting with. It was thought a bit odd for women to take part in some of the way ceremonies, but it was not forbidden. So when they'd heard Little Big Eyes in Washington was sending white eyes to see whether the N'de would have to move or be allowed to stay, Kinipai had decided to hold the Night Way, a mighty powerful ceremony. But older folks, best described as some sort of chanters' guild, had protested that everyone knew the Night Way was supposed to be held in wintertime, between the first freeze and greenup thaw. Then they'd argued that the Night Way was meant to cure the really sick, and only when all the other ways had failed and only strong bishi or dangerous spirit lore might save them.

But Kinipai had argued that their whole nation was on its deathbed and so they had to use strong medicine, without waiting for the right season. So she'd won out, for the time being.

Longarm could picture it, having sat in on such powwows in his own time.

Indians could argue the finer points of religion and tradition with the fervor of preachers or lawyers debating, with neither a Good Book nor a law book to be found. Oral tradition depended entirely on human memory, and all humans tended to remember things the way they should have been, whether they'd been that way or not.

So Kinipai had held one Night Way, and then another, and the officials had still gotten off the D&RG Western to start working out the details of a mighty long walk.